Music

You've traveled Highway 309 with us during this turbulent year. To say thanks, we'd like to gift you with an hourlong special called Holidays on Highway 309.

The pandemic has hit full-time performing musicians especially hard. There are very few places to perform and in-person audiences are sparse, at best.

WGLT's honored the late legendary blues host Gilbert "Delta" Frank Black on Saturday with a rebroadcast of the final hour of the encore appearance he made during WGLT's 50th anniversary celebration.

Listen at 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21, for an hourlong special dedicated to Delta Frank, our legendary blues host. Listen on 89.1 FM or stream at WGLT.org.

WGLT Hall of Famer and longtime blues host Gilbert Frank Black died Sunday of COVID-19-related complications. He was 79. Black served as a blues music host from 1985 until he retired in 2013.

Standing in solidarity and using fine arts as the form of expression, a downtown Black Liberation Celebration brought people of all demographics together Saturday to support the African American community in a plea for justice among injustices taking place nationwide.

Any blues musician will tell you that everyone gets the blues. But for the past few months, that line has changed to “nearly everyone now has the blues.”

The coronavirus pandemic is scary for many who live on tight margins or don’t have the security of a steady paycheck. That includes independent musicians, venue owners, promoters, and others whose livelihood depends on a thriving and functioning arts and music scene.

Many people might think of classical music as a genre largely filled with works popular with audiences hundreds of years ago, or difficult-to-access current music hard for non-musicians to "get." Illinois State University hopes to dispel that misconception next week at the RED NOTE New Music Festival.

If music be the food of love, play on... 

Years of vibrant growth in the live music scene in Bloomington-Normal have benefitted men, not women. Maybe that shouldn’t be a complete surprise. A study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative last year found women are vastly underrepresented in popular music. But an in-depth report by WGLT shows harsher central Illinois numbers and cloudy prospects for change.

The lure of the symphony and the timelessness of classical music comes from the power and images invoked in the listener.

It is a cruel irony that the first Christian church in what is now the country of Ghana is built in a coastal fort directly over the holding pens for the slave trade.

New Yorker magazine music critic Alex Ross credits his parents' love of both classical music and European and American history for the intimate connection he made between the two disciplines at a young age.

In a time when immigrants are painted as illegal invaders and something to be feared, Adriana Martinez studies how music ties American and Mexican culture together.

Bloomington-Normal musicians continue to create new ways to promote their events and are even creating new venues for performances.

The Illinois Symphony Orchestra begins its season Friday evening at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts.

Tom Neal is a handy, creative guy and a skilled woodworker. He could spend his time making just about anything if he felt like it—rocking chairs, picture frames, tables.

A music and choir teacher from Unit 5 is one of 10 nominated to be the 2019 Illinois Teacher of the Year.