"She Wrote the Song" highlights standards written or co-written by women composers who, in the early decades of American popular song, had to struggle for the limelight, as women had to in so many areas of American life. Dorothy Fields (subject of the forthcoming book I Feel a Song Coming On: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical) partnered with Jimmy McHugh and Jerome Kern to give us classics such as "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and "The Way You Look Tonight." Una Mae Carlisle was a teen protege of Fats Waller and went on to score hits with "Walkin' By the River" and "I See a Million People" (recorded by Peggy Lee with Benny Goodman). Irene Kitchings wrote only a handful of songs-some of them inspired by the end of her marriage to pianist Teddy Wilson-but her friend Billie Holiday recorded them and immortalized one in particular, "Some Other Spring." Betty Comden and writing partner Adolph Green were prominent participants in the American musical scene of the 1940s and 50s. We'll hear all of these composers' songs interpreted by Holiday, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Krall, Tierney Sutton and more.

Singer and pianist Blossom Dearie, the so-called "jazz pixie" of American popular song, passed away in her Greenwich Village apartment in New York City in February 2009 at the age of 84. She had a small, little-girlish voice-critic Whitney Balliett once wrote that it would scarcely reach the second story of a dollhouse--but she used it to her advantage, and had a very sophisticated approach to her vocals and her choice of material. Urbane, witty and wry, and romantic with a bite, Blossom Dearie, as the New York Times said of her after she passed away, was a genre unto herself.

"A Tribute to Blossom Dearie" features music from Dearie's classic late-1950s Verve albums, as well as songs that she recorded later in her career for her own Daffodil label and a number from the TV show Schoolhouse Rock.

Perfect for Women's History Month (March) Emily Remler was a rising-star jazz guitarist in the 1980s whose style, influenced by Wes Montgomery, fused hard swing and lyricism with Brazilian and other forms of music, making her one of the most compelling newcomers around. Remler did not let the notoriously sexist barriers of the jazz world deter her from her passion for playing music, and early on she landed a contract with Concord Records. Her ultimate obstacle, however, proved to be fatal: an addiction to heroin. Remler died in Australia on May 4, 1990 at the age of 32. In this program we'll hear music from her albums East to West, Take Two, and This Is Me, as well as collaborations with Larry Coryell, Ray Brown, and Susannah McCorkle. We also talk with drummer and Remler friend Robert Jospe, who knew and worked with Remler in the mid-1980s while she was staying in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Song Travels is a one-hour series distributed by NPR and hosted by the renowned "Ambassador of the Great American Songbook," Michael Feinstein. As host and artistic director, Feinstein uncovers the intimate journey singers and songs take with one another, each changing the other through the course of a lifetime.  For Feinstein, American music is really a travelogue, with art that exists only because it has traveled through artists' lives, generations, and passions:

"In this series, we talk about songs, How important they are in our lives, how they've changed our lives and how sometimes they make life worth living."
-Michael Feinstein

Feinstein welcomes a new guest each week to explore the genre of American Popular Song, examining how these great songs have evolved through the years, changing with each interpretation and artist.

Each program features an even mix of ½ insightful conversation to ½ in-studio or recorded musical performances of  guests and Feinstein.

Song Travels is a one-hour series distributed by NPR and hosted by the renowned "Ambassador of the Great American Songbook," Michael Feinstein. As host and artistic director, Feinstein uncovers the intimate journey singers and songs take with one another, each changing the other through the course of a lifetime.  For Feinstein, American music is really a travelogue, with art that exists only because it has traveled through artists' lives, generations, and passions: 

"In this series, we talk about songs, How important they are in our lives, how they've changed our lives and how sometimes they make life worth living." 
-Michael Feinstein 

Feinstein welcomes a new guest each week to explore the genre of American Popular Song, examining how these great songs have evolved through the years, changing with each interpretation and artist.

Each program features an even mix of ½ insightful conversation to ½ in-studio or recorded musical performances of  guests and Feinstein.

In the past 50 years, we've learned much more about the music of women composers in earlier ages.  One of the most studied, discussed, and performed of these composers is the medieval Abbess and mystic Hildegard von Bingen. On this edition of Harmonia, we'll explore the continuing popularity of Hildegard, and some different approaches to her music. Hosted by Angela Mariani.

The Mother Tongue Monologues present Black women as concrete cultural beings...living, loving, suffering, rejoicing, working, struggling and achieving in the context of a definite cultural community. The monologues focus on the lives they live and make for themselves within families, communities and the historical narrativethat make their lives and your lives, meaningful. Black women telling it like it is, with all its' truths, brazen acts, shouts and silent revolutions, from slavery to civil rights, from welfare rights to Hip Hop Wars.

DIY!