by Kile Smith | Jan 20, 2025 | Jazz, WRTI
[An edited version of this published in Broad Street Review 28 Jan 2025, “Remembering beloved WRTI jazz announcer Bob Perkins.”] Jazz broadcaster Bob Perkins, an announcer on radio station WRTI in Philadelphia for 25 years, died yesterday, January 19th. He...
by Kile Smith | Mar 18, 2021 | Fleisher Discoveries, WRTI
There’s a warm remembrance of Bliss on the WRTI website, along with a lovely note by Debra Lew Harder. He died last week from COVID-19, following his wife Peggy, who was taken by the pandemic only a fortnight earlier. So sad. I had seen Bliss playing in the bass...
by Kile Smith | Aug 12, 2018 | Fleisher Collection, Radio, WRTI
On Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection, Saturday, August 4, 5–6 pm… We had a taste of Richard Strauss on our last Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection, a program with another Strauss, Johann Jr., and Edward MacDowell. Today we’ll look just at Richard...
by Kile Smith | Jul 7, 2018 | Classical music, Fleisher Collection, Radio, WRTI
A few days after Independence Day, we continue looking at the American composer on Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection Saturday, July 7th at 5 pm, as we have for the past few months. But on today’s program we’ll view one of the greatest of them within an...
by Kile Smith | May 27, 2018 | American music, Classical music, Fleisher Collection, Radio, WRTI
On Fleisher Discoveries, Saturday June 2nd, 5–6 pm… As we’ve noted in other Discoveries programs, Edwin Fleisher did not, in 1909, intend to found an “Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music”; rather, he started the Symphony Club. This was a place—he...
by Kile Smith | Apr 30, 2018 | American music, Classical music, Fleisher Collection, String Orchestra, WRTI
We keep one composer and swap out two from last month’s American Romantics program on Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection. The two new composers are two Arthurs—Bird and Foote—and we’ll hear music they first wrote for other purposes. Arthur Foote’s Theme and...
