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.
-
In the midst of a still rocky financial landscape, one suburban Philadelphia county is investing in the arts as a path to a more vibrant local economy.… -
Although it did not explicitly ban drinking, the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of…
-
As Philadelphia’s Rodin Museum reopens, WRTI's Susan Lewis explores the life and work of the iconic French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917).
-
As the National Constitution Center stages a major exhibition on Prohibition, WRTI's Susan Lewis looks at the early 20th-century ban on alcohol, and its…
-
Classical music is a complex art form, and learning an instrument well takes not only talent but many hours, days, and years of lessons and practice.…
-
Following in the footsteps of legends such as Leopold Stokwoski, Eugene Ormandy, and Riccardo Muti, Yannick Nezet-Seguin is set to conduct his inaugural…
-
Simon Rattle, the British-born conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, is one of the best-known classical musicians alive. His influence shows up in all…
-
Nineteenth and early 20th-century American artist Winslow Homer painted civil war scenes, landscapes, and seascapes, but his tour de force was a close up…
-
When playwright August Wilson died in 2005, The New York Times writer Ben Brantley compared his writing to "the sweep of Shakespearean music," his plays…
-
Pioneering 20th-century sculptor and furniture maker Wharton Esherick lived and worked in Philadelphia and the surrounding countryside, where his onetime…
