© 2024 WRTI
Your Classical and Jazz Source. Celebrating 75 Years!
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
 
ALERT: there will be maintenance throughout the evening to upgrade the infrastructure for HD-2 and the audio stream. As a result, there may be intermittent outages.

The Philadelphia Orchestra In Concert on WRTI 90.1: Wynton Marsalis' Blues Symphony In The Spotlight

Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
Wynton Marsalis

Join us on Sunday, July 5th at 1 PM on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, July 6th at 7 PM on WRTI HD-2 to hear Wynton Marsalis’s 2009 composition Blues Symphony performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra. The work is conducted by Cristian M?celaru—for whom the symphony holds special importance. <--break->

A marriage of jazz with symphonic traditions, the symphony explores the vast canvas of American musical styles—from the blues to gospel, from ragtime to the shuffle—to create a meditation on what Marsalis calls our “enduring American rhythm.”

Read the detailed program notes from the concert here.

POIC200216LeonidasKavakos.mp3
WRTI's Susan Lewis talks to violinist Leonidas Kavakos about playing Shostakovich, and the importance of passing music on to the next generation.

Before intermission, multi award-winning violinist Leonidas Kavakos joins the Orchestra for a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s riveting Violin Concerto No. 1. Composed during the post-war years in Soviet Russia, a time of rigid censorship, Shostakovich kept the concerto unpublished until Stalin's death in March, 1953.

During intermission, Susan Lewis meets backstage at Verizon Hall with Mr. Kavakos, and Debra Lew Harder speaks with Maestro M?celaru in his dressing room.

PROGRAM:

SHOSTAKOVICH: Violin Concerto No.1 in A minor, op. 77
Leonidas Kavakos, violin

Intermission

MARSALIS: Blues Symphony

  • I: Born in Hope
  • II: Swimming in Sorrow
  • III: Reconstruction Rag
  • IV: Southwestern Showdown
  • V: Big City Breaks
  • VI: Danzon y Mambo, Choro y Samba
  • VII: Dialog in Democracy

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Christian M?celaru, conductor

Gregg Whiteside is producer and host of the Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts on WRTI, every Sunday at 1 pm on WRTI 90.1 FM, online at WRTI.org, and on the WRTI mobile app!Listen again on Monday at 7 pm on WRTI HD-2.

Gregg was the host of WRTI's morning drive show from 2012 until his retirement from WRTI in January, 2021. He began producing and hosting The Philadelphia Orchestra In Concert broadcasts in 2013, joining the Orchestra in Hong Kong for the first-ever live international radio broadcasts from that island in 2016, and in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for two historic broadcasts in 2018. You can still hear Gregg as host of the Orchestra broadcasts every Sunday and Monday on WRTI.