Susan Lewis
Arts & Culture Senior ProducerAs senior producer of arts and culture, Susan writes and produces stories about music and the arts. She’s host and producer of WRTI’s TIME IN online interview series, and producer of The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert series, to which she also contributes weekly intermission interviews. She’s also been a regular host of WRTI’s Live from the Performance Studio sessions.
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.
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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At 17 years old, pianist Sarah Tuan has already won mulitiple competitions, including first prize at the 2018 Philadelphia Young Pianists Academy. In…
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Composer and pianist Murray Hidary leads groups of people in "MindTravel," his musical meditation experience, in which participants listen to music and a…
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Join us on Friday, July 26th at 12:10 PM when local guitarist Brad Rau visits the performance studio to play music from Bach to Paul Desmond. WRTI's Susan…
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In the first part of the 20th century, live music accompanied the otherwise silent movies. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, today, concerts that pair…
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As we mark the 50th anniversary of the July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, let's look at the role of music in lunar spaceflight—from music used to wake…
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One of classical music’s biggest stars—violinist Joshua Bell—returns to music that touched his soul when he was very young. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports,…
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July 1, 2019. The hope in the "American Dream" is heard in the 2016 album, America Again, by pianist Lara Downes. WRTI’s Susan Lewis has the story.Radio…
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July 8, 2019. The ensemble Kleine Kammermusik, which, translated means "a little chamber music," celebrates the fanfare and filigree of chamber music from…
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Three years after the great success of his 1798 work The Creation, Joseph Haydn premiered another large oratorio, this time celebrating nature throughout…
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The Sphinx Performance Academy is an intensive summer program in partnership with The Curtis Institute of Music for middle and high school-aged Black and…