Susan Lewis

Now in its 10th season, Intercultural Journeys is an organization that seeks to foster greater communication and peace between people of diverse faiths and conflicting cultures through world-class performances in music, dance and the spoken word.

Founded by Philadelphia Orchestra cellist Udi Bar-David, the group has drawn artists from all over the world, including stage, film, and television star Mandy Patinkin.

Mr. Patinkin performs with Intercultural Journeys' Middle Eastern Ensemble on Sunday, March 17th, 3 pm at William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia.

Ars Nova means “New Art,” and for over a dozen years, Ars Nova Workshop has been presenting musicians performing jazz and experimental music in Philadelphia. Susan Lewis reports on how promoting new music is in keeping with the City's rich musical history. 

Coming up on Wednesday, March 20th at 8 pm...Ars Nova Workshop presents The Billy Hart Quartet at the Philadelphia Art Alliance on Rittenhouse Square in Center City, Philadelphia.

Gioachino Rossini was born the last day of February in 1792. WRTI's Susan Lewis looks at the life and legacy of this prolific and celebrated operatic composer whose memorable melodies endure today.

Philadelphia’s All-City Orchestra has brought together talented music students from city high schools for over 60 years,. Its alumni include musicians in orchestras around the country. Students are learning from some of the best in the business, starting with their director, Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Timpani Don Liuzzi.

The annual All-Philadelphia High School Music Festival takes place on Monday March 4th at the Kimmel Center. The Philadelphia Orchestra performs the Shostakovich 5th Symphony on March 1st. 

Band music includes marches, pop songs, and transcriptions of orchestral works. But over the last century more composers have written explicitly for winds. The Philadelphia Wind Symphony was founded, in part, to explore the variety and richness of the repertoire.

The Philadelphia Wind Symphony performs this Sunday afternoon, March 3rd, at the University of the Arts, in Center City, Philadelphia.  

While many people still attend concerts in traditional halls, classical music is also being played in more informal settings - and in combination with different types of music. WRTI’s Susan Lewis investigates LiveConnections, which conducts programs at World Café Live in Philadelphia and Wilmington.

LEWIS: Hearing great music performed up close can be a life-changing experience. That’s the premise of LiveConnections, where Melinda Steffy is general manager.

STEFFY:  We focus a lot on collaborations with musicians across genres and try to push the boundaries of music, so it's both very compelling and very accessible for a diverse range of people.

A Bach prelude, for example, might be played straight, then again in a jazz style.

LEWIS: This philosophy drives three programs: Bridge Sessions, in partnership with other organizations,  presents interactive performances for adults with special needs and groups of students.  ClassicAlive is a concert series for the general public with classical music performed with other genres in an intimate setting. Curator Mary Javian says the concerts expand the boundaries of repertoire, collaboration, and atmosphere.

JAVIAN: We’re bringing classical musicians of a very high level into a club. Asking them to perform while  people might have a drink, or might have a meal. But what we find is that the audiences are extremely engaged, because they’re getting an experience they wouldn’t have otherwise.

LEWIS: A third program, Live Studio, aims to use state-of-the-art video technology to connect underserved populations who cannot make it to the venue.

Coming up on February 24th: ClassicAlive presents Project Trio - a trio of bass, cello, and flute influenced by classical music, hip hop, and jazz, along with musicians from Friends Select School. 

Today, orchestra audiences know the concertmaster as the violinist who precedes the conductor onstage, and helps the orchestra tune – a sign that the concert is about to begin.  WRTI’s Susan Lewis discovered that the position carried duties both onstage and off.

LEWIS: The concertmaster is foremost the first chair of the first violins, a section that often carries the melody.  Philadelphia Orchestra Concertmaster David Kim says his musical duties include setting bowing patterns for the strings.

KIM: Let me use the slow movement of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusic. First I’m going to use a long bow  and try to capture as many notes as I can without changing the bow. If I decided, okay, well, I think we need more bow so I’m going to have us change bow - the direction that we change the bow -  many times. Then suddenly it will sound like I’m singer. Here’s one that I’m breaking the bow as it were.

LEWIS:  There are plenty of nonmusical duties as well.  On  a typical day, Kim checks in with the conductor before they start rehearsal.

KIM:  If it’s Yannick, go in and say hello, anything Maestro, last second, that you need to talk about? If it's a guest conductor, welcome them to town; do they need a restaurant recommendation? Do they need to know where to buy concert socks? Just anything, please depend on their concertmaster.

LEWIS:  Kim serves as liason between the conductor and members of the Orchestra.  He makes public appearances on behalf of the Orchestra, and the music director, if he is not available.

It’s not settled whether 19th-century pianist and composer Frederic Chopin was born on February 22nd, or March 1st, 1810.  But as Susan Lewis reports, one thing that’s clear is that he made a significant mark on music in his short life of just under 40 years.    

LEWIS:  Born in Poland and raised in Warsaw, Frederic Chopin’s virtuosity was recognized early. As a young man, he went to Paris and joined a community of like-minded performers and artists, including the female writer who took the name George Sand, with whom he had an extended love affair. University of Pennsylvania Music Professor Jeffrey Kallberg  says Paris was a mecca for pianists who typically performed their own music.

KALLBERG: Liszt being one, but people like Frederick Kaltbrenner, Theodore Durler, people we tend to forget these days.  Chopin fit in with these, but what really set him apart was the extraordinary quality of what he composed.

LEWIS: Kallberg says Chopin preferred the craft and counterpoint of Bach and Mozart to the styles of his musical contemporaries, many of whom were writing program music that followed a story line.  Instead of writing for the piano as a pure melodic instrument, Chopin, would allow it to blur sounds together.

KALLBERG: ...and to produce a sort of sonic haze that looks forward to a composer like Debussy, for example. I’m thinking of  in a work like  the Nocturne in c sharp minor , which is a work unlike most nocturnes seems not to have a lyrical melody at the beginning, what you have is a melody that moves scarcely at all. 

What you hear is just chords undulating and a mood being set without any melody to hang onto.. so he was rethinking what forms and genres were about by putting emphasis on new kinds of sounds.

LEWIS: Kallberg is author of Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History and Musical Genre.

For decades, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, or PCMS, has been feeding the region's growing musical appetite  with increasing numbers of concerts.   As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, PCMS grew out of the celebrated Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, where gifted classical musicians have been playing chamber music since 1951.

Lewis:  Building on the success of the summer programs, in 1965, Marlboro leaders established concert series in New York, Boston, Princeton and Philadelphia, where the primary office was located.  Longtime Marlboro co-administrator and PCMS founder Tony Checchia:

Checchia: For those concerts to have more exposure and for the young artists to have an opportunity to have the experience of touring, they would form what  they called Music from Marlboro.

Lewis: For two decades,  Music from Marlboro presented four or five concerts a year in various venues around the city, including Moore College, the Walnut Street Theater and the Seaport Museum.   But  PCMS Executive Director Philip Maneval says Philadelphians wanted more:

Maneval:  Groups like the Juilliard quartet and Beaux Arts trio. There was a small group of very devoted music lovers who were regularly traveling to up to New York, or on their way down to Washington to hear these wonderful ensembles.

Lewis:  And so,  in 1986, The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society was born.

Checchia:  There are wonderful artists who would never have appeared in Philadelphia if a series like this hadn't been developed.   For instance, Horshevsky, who was a great artist, his last concert was for us at the Seaport Museum.

PCMS is presenting 64 concerts this season.

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society is presenting concerts in center city next Monday and Wednesday at the Kimmel Center,  and Friday at the American Philosophical Society.