Susan Lewis
Consulting ProducerSusan is a consulting producer for The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert series on WRTI, and contributes weekly intermission interviews with conductors and artists featured in the broadcasts.
In her more than 15 years at WRTI, Susan has interviewed a wide range of leading artists including conductors and composers: Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Simon Rattle, Wynton Marsalis, Marin Alsop, and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Christoph Eshenbach, Hannibal Locumbe, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jennifer Higdon, Donald Nally, John Adams, Valerie Coleman, Mason Bates; instrumentalists and vocalists: Yo-Yo Ma, Lang Lang, Itzak Perlman, Helene Grimaud, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Sharon Isbin, Andre Watts, Mark O’Connor, Angel Blue, Lawrence Brownlee, Jason Vieaux, Sarah Chang, and groundbreaking ensembles, including Imani Winds, PRISM Quartet, LA Guitar Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, and The Crossing, as well as people from the world of literature, theater and fine arts, including architect Frank Gehry, actors Dule Hill, Anna Deveare Smith, and playwrights Terry Teachout and the late Terrence McNally.
She has authored many stories about music and the arts for WRTI, and produced and was host of WRTI’s TIME IN online interview series. She also hosted WRTI’s Live from the Performance Studio sessions.
Susan came to radio with a background in journalism, speechwriting, and law, which she practiced in New York City; she also taught entertainment law at Rutgers Law School in Camden. A former freelance writer and columnist for Philadelphia Magazine, she’s also the author of Reinventing Ourselves after Motherhood and a book of essays titled, What is a Kiss, Anyway?
She lives in suburban Philadelphia with her husband, goldendoodle, and whichever of her four grown kids pop in to visit.
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Repulsed by the brutality against women in the story A Thousand and One Nights, composer John Adams created a dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra… -
Praised as an artist of "rare talent"(Gramophone) whose playing is "dazzling' (The Washington Post), Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang visited the WRTI 90.1… -
We mourn the loss of Philadelphia percussion legend, Alan Abel, who was a guru to generations of percussionists. He died on April 25, 2020 from… -
What began as Sir Edward Elgar's playful improvisation on the piano, led to international acclaim for one of his most beloved and mysterious works. After… -
Music was her family business, but conducting became her very own dream job. Now known worldwide, Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla turned to conducting when she was 11 because she was too old to begin studying an instrument. And look where she is now. -
Mahler ends his Fourth Symphony with a song about child’s vision of heaven. Its messages about joy and music fuel the passion of one of today’s rising… -
While we practice important social distancing to keep everyone healthy and safe, we don’t have to be isolated. We can share in the experience of listening… -
Pioneering bassist and composer Jymie Merritt was born in Philadelphia in 1926. He died on Friday, April 10th, 2020 at age 93. No cause was given by his… -
Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts one of the supreme monuments in Western music, and the work that initiated the great rediscovery of Bach’s music when the… -
April 6, 2020. It's spring, and time to celebrate new life in classical music. Sheku Kanneh-Mason, now famous for his performance in the May, 2018 Royal…
