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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Join us on Sunday, Jan. 28 at 1 PM on WRTI 90.1, and Monday, Jan. 29 at 7:30 PM on WRTI HD-2 when our Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcast brings you a performance recorded live in November 2021. -
Astral artists Beomjae Kim on flute and Ekaterina Skliar on mandolin are kicking off our new video series, WRTI Presents Astral, with a program of music celebrating the connections between music, art, and culture, recorded in WRTI’s Performance Studio last month. -
Early-music ensemble Sonnambula visited WRTI to perform the music of Jewish converso Leonora Duarte. Praised as “remarkable” and “superb” by The New Yorker, Sonnambula's June, 2019 release of Leonora Duarte (1610–1678): The Complete Works, marks not only the ensemble's debut recording, but the first complete recording of Duarte’s surviving music. -
Lift Every Voice and Sing, an anthem with a surging melody and a promise of hope and freedom, has been a part of family, political, and social life in Black communities for more than a hundred years. -
Join us on Sunday, February 20th at 1 PM on WRTI 90.1, and Monday, February 21st at 7 PM on WRTI HD-2 to hear highlights from WRTI's new series of Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts. -
Cinema Paradiso, written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1989. Its "Love Theme," written by Ennio Morricone with his son Andrea, has been embraced and interpreted by artists and ensembles across genres, including Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, BBC Orchestra, Chris Botti, Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, George Colligan, Josh Groban, and Roberta Gambarini. -
A visionary with seemingly boundless energy, pianist Lara Downes is clearing new paths in the classical music landscape, expanding minds and spurring… -
Mozart mentioned in a letter to his father that he wanted to write a mass for his new wife Constanze, who was a soprano. “But there was no commission,” says Temple University music history professor Steven Zohn. “It’s not usual for him to write something on spec or just because he wanted to write something that showed the love for his wife.” -
I read with sadness about the passing of Terry Teachout, whom I knew as theater critic, jazz musician, playwright, and biographer of jazz greats. And that was just part of who he was. -
It was 205 years ago when "Silent Night" was first heard by Austrian villagers attending Christmas Eve mass in St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf. How did this simple melody, with its words of comfort, become a beloved hymn of peace throughout the world? WRTI's Susan Lewis has the story.
