Pioneer Works is excited to present the 14th annual Ragas Live Festival featuring 24 hours of transcendent music in the Pioneer Works Main Hall. The entire program will be broadcast live on video at Pioneer Works' Youtube & WKCR 89.9 FM in NYC (audio only). For the 2025...

Sid Gribetz presents pianist Dodo Marmarosa Sunday October 12, 2025 from 2-7 PM on “Sunday Profiles”. Michael Marmarosa was born on December 12, 1925 to a working class Italian immigrant family in Pittsburgh.  Dodo was a childhood nickname, and he began taking serious classical music lessons...

WKCR is pleased to announce a special broadcast celebrating saxophonist Pharoah Sanders on what would be his 85th birthday. The broadcast will preempt all regular jazz slots and more, from 5-8:30 AM and from 12-10 PM.  Pharoah Sanders, born Ferrell Lee Sanders in 1940 in Little Rock, Arkansas, was...

Tune in to WKCR on Friday, October 10, for our 24-hour birthday broadcast honoring the great Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-1982). Born in North Carolina, Monk would move into the San Juan Hill (now Lincoln Center) neighborhood of Manhattan Pannonica de Koenigswarteriano at the age of 9 and would drop...

On Tuesday, September 23, WKCR-FM (89.9 FM / wkcr.org) will present its annual 24-hour broadcast honoring the life and music of John Coltrane, commemorating what would have been his 98th birthday. Born in Hamlet, North Carolina on September 23, 1926, Coltrane began his musical journey on clarinet and...

WKCR is very pleased to present a birthday broadcast for avant-garde composer John Cage on the 113th anniversary of his birthday. The broadcast will run for 24 hours, preempting all regularly scheduled programs.  Cage is an exemplar of New Music, as we define it at WKCR, and of contemporary classical...

WKCR is elated to announce two very special birthday broadcasts, spanning a combined 3 days: Lester Young, known also as “Prez,” and Charlie “Bird” Parker. We celebrate each of these saxophone giants with a 24-hour birthday broadcast: Prez on August 27 and Bird on August 29. We bridge the two...

At the onset of World War I, approximately 380,000 African American soldiers joined the war effort with 200,000 of them deployed to Europe. Many spent time in France where they gained exposure to an accepting, celebratory, and seemingly colorblind attitude toward Black people–an incredible upgrade...