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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Artist Linda Lee Alter began collecting art by women in the mid 1980s after finding a dearth of female artists represented in museums and galleries. She… -
In the first part of the 20th century, George Gershwin found fortune as a composer of popular songs, which were used in dozens of Broadway and Hollywood…
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As the National Constitution Center stages a major exhibition on Prohibition, Susan Lewis looks at the early 20th-century ban on alcohol and its…
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Susan Lewis explores an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the American painter Winslow Homer and the American tradition of lifesaving.
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Susan Lewis profiles The Philadelphia Wind Symphony. The ensemble will perform works by Tchaikovsky, Holst, and Shostakovich at the University of the Arts…
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As the Free Library of Philadelphia continues its celebration of A Year of Dickens, WRTI's Susan Lewis considers the lasting appeal of the 19th-century…
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Philadelphia is a city rich with classical musical offerings, from Philadelphia Orchestra concerts at the Kimmel Center to recitals in homes, neighborhood…
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Trumpet virtuoso, singer and bandleader Louis Armstrong propelled jazz onto the mainstream stage, shaping the music with his own distinctive style. Jazz…
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As The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia stages the Terry Teachout play about the legendary trumpet player Louis Armstrong, Susan Lewis explores the life and…
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A new master plan for cultural and economic development in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania - Creative Montco - is investigated by Susan Lewis.
