Kevin Day has composed well-received works for orchestra and jazz combo, but nothing has stretched his horizons quite like Lalovavi: An Afrofuturist Opera in Three Acts — his debut opera, which will premiere at the Cincinnati Opera in 2026. During a recent visit to WRTI, Day talked about this epic work, and played some of its themes at the piano.
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Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert on Demand
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Join us for The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert, on Sunday, June 15 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, and Monday, June 16 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.
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Join us for The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert, on Sunday, June 8 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, and Monday, June 9 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2. Music and artistic director 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.
WRTI Video of the Week
The Late Set Podcast
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Pianist-composer Amaro Freitas creates music with a vivid sense of place. His native Brazil pulses through his most recent album, Y'Y, which mixes jazz with Afro-Brazilian and indigenous music, and the sounds of the Amazon. Freitas discusses this and more with Josh Jackson, in a deeply searching conversation recorded backstage at New York's Winter Jazzfest earlier this year.
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The spiritual and the sensual find common cause in the music of harpist Brandee Younger. Before a recent show at Solar Myth, she sat down with The Late Set to talk about her instrument, her cohort, and her third Impulse! release, Gadabout Season, which finds her in exceptional form.
WRTI News Stories
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For her new album, musician Anne Harris commissioned a violin from luthier Amanda Ewing, the first such professional collaboration between two Black women to be recorded.
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Juneteenth honors Freedom Day, a 19th century landmark for Black Americans across the country. WRTI has prepared special programming in that spirit, featuring music from John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Lionel Loueke and more.
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The ambitious violinist has an insatiable appetite for new music, much of which she's commissioned herself.
Enjoy WRTI in whole new way.