Between the Keys with Jed Distler

For this week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler digs into his collection of rare yet worthy piano recordings.

“So many great piano performances tend to go out of print quickly, or else they never gain digital reissue,” Distler explains. “I make it my duty to share these recordings with listeners.  In turn, listeners often turn me on to great recordings that I myself didn't know about.”

For this week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler presents a program devoted to the new, the old and the unexpected.

Selections include works by Bach, Brahms, Scriabin, Debussy and contemporary composers Bruce Lazarus, Laura Kaminsky and David Sanford.

Tune in to Between the Keys every Tuesday at 10:00 PM, only here on The Classical Network and WWFM.org

For this week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler demonstrates slow cooking.

Baseball may have been in limbo during the lockdown, yet we’ve got a veritable “double header” for this week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys.

“I’ve been wanting to devote an entire program to a couple of large-scale and utterly disparate works for piano and orchestra,” says Jed Distler, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence and the writer, producer and host of Between the Keys.  “So I came up with a wild pairing that probably hasn’t been done before.”

On this week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler explores Schumann’s popular piano cycle Kinderszenen Op. 15 in comparative performances for all of its thirteen movements.

On this week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler presents a veritable melting pot of music and musicians.

Selections include works by William Byrd, Terry Riley, Eleanor Alberga, Sara Feigin, Terry Riley, George Crumb, Frederic Chopin, Elena Ruehr, Gerald Busby and Bela Bartok, along with Erroll Garner’s unique take on Chopin’s C-sharp Minor Waltz.

This week on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler presents piano music of Beethoven in rare recordings.

This week on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler brings you a program made entirely of listener requests.

“I reached out to listeners on my Between the Keys Facebook page,” DIstler explains. “The rule was that you could suggest a recording or performance as long as it wasn’t your own recording or your own composition, and that your request couldn’t exceed ten minutes.”

This week on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler explores music inspired by the world of dreams. He also talks about how cats dream, and remembers an extraordinary musical dream he had involving a piano lesson with Liberace!

Tune in Tuesday June 2nd at 10:00 PM for works by Amy Beach, John Dowland, Eleonor Sandresky, Nikolai Kapustin, Franz Schubert and Dana Suesse on Between the Keys, an exclusive production of The Classical Network and WWFM.org.

This week on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler welcomes Grammy Award-winning pianist and composer Jeffrey Biegel for music and conversation.

This week on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler welcomes back fellow radio host and pianist James Irsay, who presents a playlist of piano performances that one might consider to be “over the top.”

This Tuesday night on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler showcases the artistry of Martino Tirimo, one of today’s most distinctive and frequently recorded pianists, whose recent box set release of Beethoven’s complete solo piano works marks the composer’s 250th birthday year in 2020.

On this week's edition of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler offers an eclectic selection of works that typifies his imaginative mixing and matching of styles, genres and artists.

This week on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler features recordings by the legendary Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997)

This week on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler welcomes Tim Page for a special program-length interview, where the Pultizer Prize winning author and critic talks about his extensive and innovative life as a classical radio host and personality from the late 1970s through the early 1990s.

This week on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler presents Episode 251: Sonata Obscura.

For the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys’ 250th episode, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler offers excerpts from interviews with past guest pianists Angela Hewitt, Emanuel Ax and Marc-André Hamelin, along with previews of upcoming programs featuring Jeffrey Biegel, Alvin Curran and Norma Fisher. There also will be music, of course.

Although our attention now centers around  the pandemic, our health and well-being and helping to flatten the curve, the Beethoven 250th anniversary year still looms in our collective artistic mind and spirit here at The Classical Network. This week our Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler celebrates the fifth anniversary of his ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys with an all-Beethoven program. Except that’s it’s all Beethoven with a twist.

  The celebrated American pianist Anthony de Mare joins the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, celebrating Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday with the culmination of “Liasons: Re-imagining Sondheim from the piano.” This multi-year commissioning project involves 50 composers who were invited to create original piano pieces based upon songs by the iconic Broadway legend.  “Tony de Mare invited a wide range of composers to contribute, casting a net that embraces contemporary classica

Episode 247 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys is devoted to what the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler calls “the new, the old and the unexpected.”

Episode 146 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys brings the highly acclaimed and innovative composer/pianist Conrad Tao to the studio, where he and the Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler discuss musical matters close to this young musician’s heart and mind. Selections include works by Debussy, Rachmaninov, Copland, Rzewski and, of course, Conrad Tao himself.

Tune in this Tuesday at 10:00 PM for Between the Keys, an exclusive production of The Classical Network and WWFM.org.

Episode 245 of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys celebrates Portugal’s rich and vibrant piano tradition, featuring artists such as Maria João Pires, Jose Vianna da Motta, Sequeira Costa and Artur Pizarro.

The young Portuguese pianist Vasco Dantas, who recently made his Carnegie Hall debut, joins Between the Keys host Jed Distler (The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence) in the studio. We’ll hear selections by Chopin and Mussorgsky from Dantas’ most recent CD releases.

On Episode 244 on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, host Jed Distler explores unsuspected yet intriguing commonalities between piano pieces.

“You might consider Chopin’s Op. 34 No. 3 Waltz and Robert Paterson’s majestic two-piano piece Deep Blue Ocean to be strange bedfellows, or even the pairing of a John Field and a Gabriel Fauré Nocturne might seem weird,” says Distler. “You’d never suspect that the syncopations of a Schubert Klavierstücke could break bread with one of John White’s quirky little piano sonatas.”

27-year-old Benjamin Grosvenor is considered to be one of the greatest pianists of his generation, or any other generation, for that matter. Ever since emerging in his teens as a prodigy mature beyond his years, Grosvenor continues to evolve artistically, as he builds a legacy of recordings that often achieve reference status, such as his Chopin Scherzos and Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, and a new release encompassing both Chopin Concertos.

Episode No. 242 on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys celebrates one of the piano world’s most fascinating luminaries, Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938), whose 150th birthday falls on Feburary 13th 2020.

On this week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler puts a program together featuring noteworthy new releases that feature pianists Paul Wee, Moura Lympna, Sahan Azruni, Janelle Fung, Rosa Antonelli, Frederic Chiu, the Leonore Piano Trio, and the piano duo of Roberto Prosseda and Alessandra Ammara.

Tune in Tuesday night at 10 for Between the Keys, an exclusive production of The Classical Network and WWFM.org.

This week’s episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys features a special guest, the 20-year-old multi-talented British composer, pianist, singer, writer and broadcaster Jack Pepper.

Tonight's episode of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys is called The French Connection. It’s not about the famous film of the same name, but is rather a celebration of women who have helped shape the world and culture of French pianism.