Arts Desk

For almost 60 years, the only recording on which Hasaan Ibn Ali’s piano playing could be heard was 1964’s The Max Roach Trio Featuring The Legendary Hasaan, an album for which Hasaan—one of the most enigmatic figures in all of Philadelphia jazz lore—did not receive top billing even though he wrote all the music.

Lahav Shani followed Yannick Nézet-Séguin as principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic in September of 2018 and has succeeded Zubin Mehta as music director of the Israel Philharmonic as of 2020. A concert pianist, he has also studied and played the bass professionally. WRTI’s Susan Lewis has more on the young maestro and the story of how Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 led him into conducting.

Throw on Joey DeFrancesco’s new album, More Music, and you’re met almost immediately with the sound of an organ. Of course you are; DeFrancesco’s the most celebrated jazz organist in the world—what’d you expect? But this organ, this organ player… something sounds different, more subdued—earth tones compared to the boisterous musical pastels and neons we’ve grown accustomed to hearing from DeFrancesco.

In correspondence with a patron, Tchaikovsky confessed he was grappling with the idea of fate in his Symphony No. 4. The composer tried to make sense of his world with music that still resonates today. In this conversation from 2017, Yannick Nézet-Séguin talks with WRTI's Susan Lewis about this concept in Tchaikovsky's music.

As live performances slowly make their way back into our calendars, hope blossoms further at the news of vocal music returning to the stage. Choral Arts Philadelphia will give two of those performances on November 10th in Rittenhouse Square and November 14th in Bryn Mawr, entitled The Lost Oratorios of Giacomo Carissimi.

Few people mean more to Temple University’s music program than Terell Stafford, director of jazz studies and chair of instrumental studies. And few people meant more to Stafford than Jimmy Heath, the saxophone-playing middle brother in what could very reasonably be called Philadelphia jazz’s first family.

When the young Robert Schumann fell in love with his piano teacher’s daughter, Clara Wieck, her father was not pleased and tried to keep them apart. How did they keep their passion alive?

Sad news to share: we're remembering Pat Martino after news arrived that he passed away today, November 1, 2021, after living with COPD for several years.

Two composers—working centuries apart—come together in Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. WRTI’s Susan Lewis has the story about what became one of Vaughn Williams' most successful orchestral works.

Among the myriad small pleasures that make life worth coming back to day after day—a well-struck golf shot, a pull-through parking spot, bottomless chips and salsa—is an album that turns out to be way more enjoyable than you expected.