Jazz Through the Night

December 7, 2020. Some performers are so far from anonymous, they become mononymous—instantly recognizable by just a one-word name. In jazz: Duke, Satch, Miles, Coltrane, Bird, Monk...and Ella. First Lady of Song and all the other honorifics are nice but superfluous; "Ella" tells the entire story.

November 30, 2020. There are some things in life you don’t want to perceive being made—laws and sausages chief among them. On the other hand, there are the yoga studio idealists whose wisdom suggests the opposite, that the process is everything, that life’s beauty resides in the journey, and that once you realize that, the destination becomes almost beside the point.

Dave Brubeck is responsible for so much wonderful music, it’s hard to choose just one favorite song. The WRTI Jazz Department was tasked with narrowing the field to reveal the tunes they love the most. Here’s what they came up with.

November 23, 2020. Imagine deconstructing an award-winning 21-piece band, scattering its members not just across the Delaware Valley but the country, having each instrumentalist record his/her parts individually, and then taking each of those individually recorded parts and surgically stitching it all back together to make it sound like the entire band was recorded in the same place, at the same time.

November 16, 2020. There’s a lot of information out there about bees these days, so it’s best to get a few things straight. The Asian giant hornet, the so-called “murder hornet,” is a dangerous potential scourge to the Pacific Northwest’s ecosystem. New video evidence shows a group of just several dozen murder hornets laying waste to a colony of 30,000 honey bees with cold, ruthless efficiency. These insects carry a potent venom and are not to be trifled with.

November 9, 2020. After a tense election season marked by discord and division, you might find yourself yearning for something, anything, to restore your faith in this country and its institutions. Music has that power.

The Martians are coming! Join us the week of October 26th leading up to Halloween for some super scary and extraterrestrial classical and jazz fun on WRTI. It’s Alien Invasion Week, so get set for music that's out of this world.

October 26, 2020. It’s been over 20 years since the release of the Sun Ra Arkestra’s last studio album, 1999’s Song for the Sun. But their new album, Swirling, confirms that space is, indeed, still the place.

October 19, 2020. If 2020 is finding you nostalgic for that early-to-mid ’60s lineup of Jazz Messengers featuring trombonist Curtis Fuller teaming up with legendary names like Hubbard, Shorter, Walton, Merritt, and Blakey, then you owe it to yourself to get acquainted with the Black Art Jazz Collective (BAJC).

October 12, 2020. All rise, the biggest male voice in jazz has returned. Although, strange as it may seem, that generous designation is actually limiting when talking about Gregory Porter. Because that amorphous place where jazz, gospel, blues, soul, and R&B all get together and cross streams—he presides with just as much authority there, too.