In the hands of Béla Fleck, a banjo is a skeleton key, capable of unlocking almost any musical door. For this episode, he joins us in the banjo parlor at Vintage Instruments to talk musical legacies, personal histories, and how his perspective has changed (and how it hasn’t) over the course of a nearly five-decade career.
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Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert on Demand
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Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia OrchestraJoin us for The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert, on Sunday, March 15 at 1 p.m. on WRTI-FM and Monday, March 16 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 as Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads performances from 2019, including generous excerpts from Sergei Prokofiev’s legendary ballet Romeo and Juliet, as well as a recently rediscovered Funeral Song by Igor Stravinsky. -
Jessica Griffin/Philadelphia OrchestraJoin us for The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert, on Sunday, March 8 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, and Monday, March 9 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2. Music and artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads performances from past seasons, including Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3, Haydn’s Symphony No. 92, a witty tone poem by Peter Maxwell Davies, and the premiere performance of a Flute Concerto by Iranian-American composer Behzad Ranjbaran, featuring principal flute Jeffrey Khaner.
Béla Fleck at Vintage Instruments
Watch the banjo virtuoso's full conversation with Nate Chinen, for The Late Set.
The Late Set Podcast
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Mark Turner is a modern master, a tenor saxophonist whose influence on the jazz tradition can hardly be overstated. So we're thrilled to talk with him about his new ECM album, Patternmaster, and some of the speculative fiction (and actual music) that inspired it. -
Search high and low, in this world and beyond, and you won't ever find another Sun Ra. So we're excited about the broadcast premiere of Sun Ra: Do the Impossible on PBS. Our own Nate Chinen is a commentator in the film — and so is our guest this episode, the author and critic Marcus J. Moore, who brings a multilayered appreciation of Sun Ra's artistry to our conversation. Space is the Place!
WRTI News Stories
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Tune in on Saturday, March 14 at 1 p.m. to hear WRTI's live broadcast of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, from The Metropolitan Opera. -
Who said you can never go home again? This week we have resounding evidence to the contrary. -
This week's offerings on the classical concert scene promise something for every taste and every age.
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