River

Ready for a fabulous in-person concert experience? We invite you to discover eight incredibly talented Astral artists, winners of the highly competitive Astral National Auditions, presented by our very own senior producer of arts & culture, Susan Lewis. The date is Wednesday, October 20th from 7 to 8:30 PM. The place is Stotesbury Mansion just off of Rittenhouse Square.

The members of Recap, four young women of color from New Jersey, have built a mission of gender equity into their striking debut album.

Join us on Sunday, Oct. 17th at 1 PM on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, Oct. 18th at 7 PM on WRTI HD-2 to hear The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcast from 2019, showcasing the “King of Instruments” in all its glory.

The Philadelphia Orchestra's principal guest conductor, Nathalie Stutzman, has been named music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. She follows in the footsteps of only a few women trailblazers leading major American orchestras, including Marin Alsop and JoAnn Falletta.

We're going back in time to 1986, and tenor Luciano Pavarotti was in town to sing Verdi's Requiem Mass at the Spectrum conducted by Lorin Maazel with a full orchestra and vocalists from the Opera Company of Philadelphia, now famously known as Opera Philadelphia. The entire concert was broadcast throughout the country on PBS.

While the history of the organ is steeped in majesty and tradition, modern organs are being used to express a range of new sounds. WRTI’s Susan Lewis spoke with soloist James McVinnie in 2019 about the organ and its starring role in Nico Muhly’s concerto, Register.

If you’re not ready to go all white tie and tails in an auditorium full of strangers who may or may not be vaccinated, allow me to present a relatively risk-free alternative: The Count Basie Orchestra’s (CBO) latest release, Live at Birdland.

The eloquent pianist used a work break imposed by the pandemic to learn something new: stage directing, a skill set she put to use in creating a multimedia recital.

Nate Chinen remembers Newport Jazz impresario George Wein, who helped create the modern music festival but never lost his appetite for listening in small rooms and connecting at a human scale.

In 1995, the highly respected alto saxophonist Steve Wilson told the New York Times everything you need to know about fellow altoist Kenny Garrett’s approach to playing music. “He’s the first one of us to really encompass the whole tradition of Black music with his sound."