Arts Desk
Throughout the week
Listen to WRTI's Arts Desk features for a daily look into music in the Philadelphia region.
Latest Episodes
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The arts can encourage positive cultural identity and promote cross-cultural understanding. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, that’s the premise of the…
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Competitions have tested serious music students for decades. They also have prompted the composition of works that continue to enrich the repertoire.…
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Jennfier Higdon's opera Cold Mountain premiered on August 1st at the Santa Fe Opera to a world that was obviously ready for a masterwork. It was sold out…
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The symphonic organ had its heyday in the first half of the 20th century, when organists frequently transcribed and played works written for orchestra. As…
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In 1874, a Methodist preacher and a businessman founded Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York to train Sunday School teachers and provide adult…
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This past spring, the site of a weekly jam session celebrated a quarter century of making music in the shadow of the Vine Street Expressway. Now, as the…
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The composer Gustav Mahler once said, “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.” If that is so, then Mahler’s second symphony, the…
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The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia displays its art exactly the way it was shown in Albert C. Barnes’ mansion in Merion. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports,…
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Back in 1958, jazz drummer Art Blakey brought together ten percussionists, including Philly Joe Jones, to put his own spin on Afro-Caribbean rhythms. The…
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Center City Opera Theater is rising again after a two-year hiatus, now under the name of Vulcan Lyric...and it's not all opera. The Philadelphia…