PBS will show its second season of Next at The Kennedy Center, a performing arts series and multi-year collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Launching in October with new installments – “Robert Glasper’s Black Radio” on Friday, October 13 at 9-10 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings), PBS.org and the PBS app – the one-hour specials will spotlight contemporary and diverse artists and their contributions across art forms, genres and backgrounds.
The first episode of the second season of Next at The Kennedy Center, “Robert Glasper’s Black Radio” (October, 13), captures the ever-curious, virtuosic, and playful mind of five-time Grammy Award-winning pianist, composer, and producer Robert Glasper and showcases how Black Radio crossed genres and gave emerging artists a chance to infuse their true personalities into the music, creating the album’s unmistakable sound. With the birth of Black Radio, Glasper gave rise to a new attitude in the music industry: one where artists were allowed and encouraged to take risks, be unapologetically in the moment, and challenge their expectations of what popular music could be.
In celebration of Black Radio’s 10th Anniversary, the one-hour special documents the Kennedy Center’s homecoming for some of the album’s original collaborators. Glasper returns to the Concert Hall for a historic performance, with special guests Lalah Hathaway, Meshell Ndegeocello, Bilal, Affion Crockett, Kyle Abraham and Amir Sulaiman, and featuring Derrick Hodge leading the Black Radio Orchestra. Through the lens of music and storytelling, friends and collaborators of Glasper, including Don Cheadle, Don Was and Esperanza Spalding share how his exploration of new musical territory blended to create a musical collage from all reaches of contemporary black music and beyond.
Glasper and the creative legends behind Black Radio share with viewers their trials and tribulations as young musicians, chronicle the creation of Black Radio, discuss Glasper’s unique style of collaboration, and laugh, and cry recalling memories in the decade since the album’s conception. In a portrait of one visionary’s boundless and eternal pursuit for innovation, this story gives an intimate look into the mind behind the album that reshaped how black music is uplifted and celebrated.
NEXT AT THE KENNEDY CENTER, a new series of primetime performance specials, shines a spotlight on the Kennedy Center’s contemporary culture program, bringing the best of the nation’s stage to viewers across the country. Captured to match the unique style of the artists, each episode weaves together performances filmed live at the Kennedy Center with intimate off-stage moments and first-person commentary.
