Episodes
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WPKN's Richard Epstein (Sometimes Classical) chats with Jonathan Yates, Music Director of the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra (norwalksymphony.org), and violin soloist for the first concert of the season Alexander Markov (alexandermarkov.com). The pair discusses the 85th season of the Norwalk Symphony and Markov's innovative playing at his recent Carnegie Hall recital.
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Jason Kao Hwang discusses his early training and eventual emergence in New York’s improv loft scene. He discusses the Asian American music movement, his mentors, and the use of the electric violin. Jason has worked as a violinist with innumerable new music legends including Anthony Braxton, William Parker, Henry Threadgill, Tomeka Reid, Wadada Leo Smith, Joëlle Léandre and many others. He has received support from Chamber Music America, Rockefeller Foundation, US Artists International and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and others.
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The Courettes join WPKN's Howard Thompson (PURE) discussing their fourth tour of the US in conjunction with the release of their new album THE SOUL OF THE FABULOUS COURETTES...
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Jim Reid, singer/songwriter, lead singer, and co-founder (with brother William Reid) for The Jesus and Mary Chain, chats with WPKN's Herman Olivera (ReHumanize Yourself Radio) ahead of the group's WPKN Presents performance at College Street Music Hall on Tuesday, October 1st at 7PM. In partnership with Premier Concerts and Manic Presents.
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Tim Butler, bassist, and co-founder of the English rock band the Psychedelic Furs, chats with WPKN's Herman Olivera (ReHumanize Yourself Radio) ahead of the group's WPKN Presents performance at College Street Music Hall on Tuesday, October 1st at 7PM. In partnership with Premier Concerts and Manic Presents.
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WPKN programmer Valerie Richardson speaks with artist Iyaba Ibo Mandingo about his exhibition Arwe Journey: Twentieth-Century Afri-Caribbean Migration, which will be on view at the Housatonic Museum of Art from Weds. Sept. 18, 2024, through Feb. 21, 2025. In the 61 paintings in this exhibition, the artist Iyaba Ibo Mandingo tells the story of the 20th-century Afri-Caribbean migration to Europe and North America. Arwe Journey takes its inspiration from Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration series and August Wilson’s plays. The exhibition will be accompanied by many special programs including performances of poetry and storytelling by the artist himself. Also joining the conversation were co-curators Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye, director of the Housatonic Museum of Art, and Suzanne Kachmar, director of Bridgeport’s City Lights Gallery. On a side note, Valerie chose to end the interview segment with a snipper of the song Push Back Your Bam-Bam by the Calypso Antiguan artist King Short Shirt. Iyaba was delighted to hear this song and shared after the interview that his mother worked as a backup singer with King Short Shirt.
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Bryan Munar, Orpheus in the upcoming touring production of Hadestown, talks with WPKN's Valerie Richardson ahead of the Hadestown theatrical debut at the Waterbury Palace Theater, October 3-6.
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WPKN Director of Operations and New Initiatives (and filmmaker) Brendan Toller sits down with Artistic Director / Founder Jason Coombs of the Bridgeport Film Festival, and Filmmakers Nilsa Laine and Brian A. Russell for a preview of the 2024 festival.
Nilsa Laine is the Director of "Undergraduate Experiences of Black Women at PWI Campuses" [14.57] a short documentary exploring the undergraduate experiences of Black Women - touching on freshman experience, intersectionality, and 'Black Girl Magic.'
Brian Russell is the Director of SilverSizzle [13.35] a short described as: a cemetery caretaker embarks on a quest to help two recent widowers find new love among widows visiting their departed spouses.
https://www.bridgeportfilmfest.org/
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Kevin Gallagher talks with Michael Pillot, Festival Organizer of the Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr's Quantum Leap Festival, Nola2Nofo, happening Friday 9/13 through Sunday 9/15 at Borghese Vineyard, 17150 Middle Road Cutchogue, NY 11935
Funk, blues, jazz, hip-hop, zydeco, swampadelic guitar - the music and culture of New Orleans hits Long Island wine country. WPKN partners on this festival featuring a staggering lineup of New Orleans greats including Fred Wesley of the JBs, Sonny Landreth, Preservation Hall Legacy Band, Cyril Neville, CJ Chenier & The Red Hot Louisiana Band and so many more. Could this be NOLA JazzFest east in years to come?
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This interview features Erica Gies author of Water Always Wins, Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge (winner of the Rachel Carson Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism) and jazz bassist Stephan Crump who was inspired by the book to write an 18-part suite called Slow Water. The two are joined by WPKN's Jim Motavalli.
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WPKN and Musician's Speak host and DJ Joseph Celli interviews composer and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis during amidst a 2024 tour with the Messethics featuring members of DC DIY pioneers, Fugazi.
“James Brandon Lewis, a jazz saxophonist in his 30s, raw-toned but measured, doesn’t sound steeped in current jazz-academy values and isn’t really coming from a free-improvising perspective. There’s an independence about him, and on “Days of FreeMan” (Okeh), he makes it sound natural to play roaming, experimental funk, with only the electric bassist Jamaladeen Tacuma and the drummer Rudy Royston, and without much sonic enhancement. The record sounds a little reminiscent of what James Blood Ulmer and Ornette Coleman were doing in the late ’70s and early ’80s — on records that included Mr. Tacuma — but it’s not clearly evoking a particular past. Maybe it’s an improvised take on early ’90s hip-hop, as Mr. Lewis has suggested, but it sounds less clinical than that. It sounds like three melodic improvisers going for it.”
— The New York Times - Show more
