Nouveau Jazz Showcase

On WRTI, regardless of the month, you can always count on hearing music by composers who are women, and performances by women artists. But during Women’s History Month we’re turning up the volume to showcase women in classical music and jazz in more specific ways.

It feels strange calling Robert Glasper’s R+R=NOW a “supergroup” because every group Glasper leads seems worthy of that appellation. Yet, there is something particularly relevant right now about this one, which was named out of Glasper’s desire for the group’s music to be both an accurate reflection of the times and an effective and immediate response to them.

Jazz and community. Jazz and activism. Jazz and family. These aren’t just words for West Philadelphia drummer, composer, and educator Justin Faulkner. They’re life lines, ideas on which to act, interact and intercede, to work toward, play with, and pray for.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) has announced that WRTI has been chosen to participate in the Jazz Media Lab, a newly launched public media collective comprising five dynamic and forward-thinking nonprofit jazz radio stations.

January 25, 2021. The most recognizable tunes on saxophonist Cory Weeds latest, O Sole Mio! Music from the Motherland, are synonymous with the great Italian tenors of the 20th century. Which is ostensibly curious. Weeds isn’t an opera star; he’s a saxophonist. And most of the time his go-to instrument isn’t even the tenor but the alto.

It was quite a place to grow up for a young man. His home at 1927 Federal Street in South Philadelphia was the place for musicians to hang and jam with his much older brothers: saxophonist Jimmy Heath and bassist Percy Heath. Young Albert Heath, named “Tootie” by his grandfather for tutti-frutti ice cream in his youth, was also named a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.

WRTI proudly remembers Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with special classical music and jazz programming honoring the remarkable legacy of the civil rights leader and visionary, born 92 years ago. Below are details about what we have planned.

January 11, 2021. Sunset in the Blue, vocalist Melody Gardot’s new album, works on the listener in a deliberate, almost methodical way, as though it knows it’s playing a long con. So if you find yourself preoccupied or not fully present at first listen— if you haven’t yet had your daily yoga, or engaged your mindfulness app, or done whatever it is one must do in early 2021 to attain clarity and presence, don’t despair. Gardot’s fifth full-length, studio album, and first in five years, will work on you anyway.

The call to rescue Chris’ Jazz Café has sounded, and some of the biggest names in jazz have responded.