For more than seventy years, the legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins followed his own path—restlessly searching, listening, practicing, and creating some of the most powerful and joyful music ever recorded. From hard bop to calypso, from intimate ballads to fearless improvisations, his music was always alive, always searching.
This program pays tribute to Sonny Rollins who passed away at his home in Woodstock, New York on May 25, 2026, at the age of 95.
Playlist for the week of June 13, 2026:
Oleo — Miles Davis
The Way You Look Tonight — Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins
The Concert for Bangladesh was a groundbreaking benefit concert held on August 1, 1971, at Madison Square Garden. Organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, it was created to raise money and international awareness for the humanitarian crisis caused by war, famine, and millions of refugees fleeing what was then East Pakistan during the struggle that led to the creation of Bangladesh. The concerts featured an extraordinary lineup, including Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, and Leon Russell. Widely regarded as the first major rock charity concert, it established the model for later benefit events such as Live Aid and demonstrated the power of popular music as a force for humanitarian action.
Today on Next To Silence, I’d like to do something a little different and share The Concert for Bangladesh almost in its entirety, with judicious edits to fit in the show’s 90 minute time slot.
NOTICE:
The schedule for NEXT TO SILENCE has changed. It streams live at 1700AM and on the web at peaksislandradio.com on
This show celebrates Pride Month with Queer Africa. I’ll be playing courageous artists who have come out, often at great personal risk, as they speak out against The Persecution of LGBTQ+ Individuals in Africa.
My intention is to bring an awareness of of the music from these creative artists in Africa’s LGBTQ+ community. There were limitations in what I’m able to play on the radio because many of the tunes from these artists are quite graphic with uncompromising language.
In many African countries, same-sex relationships remain criminalized, often under laws inherited from colonial powers. In some places, governments have intensified anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in recent years.
Some examples include:
Uganda, which enacted one of the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ laws in 2023.
Nigeria, where same-sex relationships are criminalized and public advocacy can be restricted.
Ghana, where anti-LGBTQ legislation has been politically contentious.
Senegal and Tanzania, where public attitudes tend to be strongly conservative.
Political leaders sometimes frame LGBTQ rights as a foreign or Western imposition, despite historical evidence that diverse sexualities and gender expressions existed in many African societies long before European colonization.
The courage of LGBTQ recording artists in many African countries goes beyond simply being “out.” For some, making music itself becomes an act of resistance, visibility, and personal risk.
They often face real consequences
Depending on the country, queer artists may encounter:
Threats and harassment, both online and in person.
Rejection by family, religious communities, or their home communities.
Difficulty finding venues, radio play, or record labels.
Censorship or cancellation of performances.
Risk of arrest or legal scrutiny in countries with anti-LGBTQ laws.
Pressure to remain closeted in order to have a successful career.
For these artists, releasing a song about same-sex love or appearing openly queer can be a profoundly courageous act.
To my LGBTQ+ listeners, and to everyone who has ever felt unseen, misunderstood, or outside the expected story, I hope this music has offered not just great songs, but a sense of fellowship. Your experiences, your stories, and your ways of loving and being in the world have always been part of the human story, and they continue to enrich it.
The show is “This is PeaksFest 2026 on Peaks Island Radio. Not the actual festival schedule, but a musical festival of our own. I’ve chosen some of my favorite songs from five former themed shows, and think that the next 90 minutes of music captures the creative, eclectic, artistic, close-knit, community-minded and absolutely quirky island on Casco Bay.
This show celebrates Arvo Pärt, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young – three innovative composers and musicians who turned 90 this past year, and are still creating and performing beautiful and challenging music.
Playlist:
00:00:00 Arvo Pärt, Gidon Kremer, Keith Jarrett — “Fratres”
00:14:14 Arvo Pärt, Duo Gazzana — “Spiegel im Spiegel”
00:25:07 Arvo Pärt, Stuttgart State Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies — “Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten”
00:33:07 Terry Riley, Spoleto Festival USA Chamber Artists — “G Song”
00:42:53 Terry Riley — “A Rainbow in Curved Air”
01:03:49 La Monte Young — “The Well-Tuned Piano”
Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) Estonian composer Arvo Pärt developed tintinnabuli, a minimalist style distilling music to its barest harmonic elements — a melodic voice wandering against the pure tones of a triad. Works like Spiegel im Spiegel and Fratres carry a spiritual stillness that reshaped how Western classical music engages with silence, simplicity, and the sacred.
Arvo Pärt developed a style he called tintinnabuli — from the Latin word for “little bells.” After years of creative silence and spiritual searching, he stripped his music down to essentials: single notes, triads, silence, resonance. “Fratres,” which means “Brothers,” exists in many different versions. This performance combines Gidon Kremer’s violin with Keith Jarrett’s piano, creating something both ancient and intimate.
Terry Riley (b. 1935) Terry Riley helped change modern music in the 1960s by introducing repetition, looping patterns, improvisation, tape delay, and influences from Indian classical music into contemporary composition.
Unlike the solemn inwardness of Pärt, Riley’s music often feels playful, open, and ecstatic.
In C is a 1964 composition by Terry Riley that became one of the foundational works of musical minimalism. It is built from 53 short musical phrases. Performers move through the phrases at their own pace while staying loosely connected to each other, creating a constantly shifting musical texture. One steady repeated high C pulse keeps the whole piece grounded.
Because of it’s length, IC C is not included in this show, but You can listen to the original recording of his masterpiece on Peaks Island Radio website. Go to SCHEDULE, Scroll down to NEXT TO SILENCE and click on December 11, 2023.
La Monte Young (b. 1935) La Monte Young is the godfather of minimalism, whose radical 1950s works — some consisting of a single sustained tone — redefined what music could be. His lifelong obsession with just intonation — tuning based on pure mathematical frequency ratios rather than the compromise tuning of a standard piano — influenced virtually every minimalist and ambient composer who followed,.
The show ends with a segment of his The Well-Tuned Piano, a sprawling improvised masterwork in this pure, resonant tuning system, remains one of the most uncompromising artistic statements of the 20th century.
This week’s show is Part One featuring sister groups—by blood, by harmony, by instinct. Voices that know each other before the song even starts. There’s a kind of musical shorthand here—tight, intuitive, sometimes eerie—where family becomes sound.
Playlist for the week of April 20, 2026:
00:00:00 Rosemary Clooney; Betty Clooney with Paul Weston and His Orchestra – “Sisters”
00:05:05 The Roches – “Hammond Song”
00:10:39 The Roches – “Mr. Sellack”
00:14:38 The Roches – “Big Nuthin’”
00:19:19 The Pointer Sisters — Jump (Original Mix)
00:23:40 The Pointer Sisters — Yes We Can Can 00:29:40 The Pointer Sisters — Fairytale
00:34:43 HAIM — The Wire 00:38:48 HAIM — Los Angeles 00:42:08 HAIM — Falling
00:49:11 The Lijadu Sisters — Danger 00:54:58 The Lijadu Sisters — Orere-Elejigbo 00:59:09The Lijadu Sisters — Life’s Gone Down Low
01:04:03 Heart — Crazy On You 01:08:55 Heart — Barracuda 01:13:17 Heart — Magic Man
This week’s show is a tribute to Bob Weir, a founding member of the Grateful Dead and a pioneer of the jam band movement, who passed away on January 10, 2026, at the age of 78 following a battle with cancer and underlying lung issues. He is considered an essential figure in American music for his innovative rhythm guitar style and for spending over six decades building a global community dedicated to musical improvisation and artistic freedom.
Today we will honor his memory in songs that feature his voice and unique guitar style. While Garcia drifted and soared, Weir built the frame—odd chords, sharp angles, rhythm that kept everything moving. He was just 16 when he met Garcia in a Palo Alto parking lot, and within a year he was in the band that became the Grateful Dead, learning as the music unfolded around him. Today’s set follows that path—from the early songs through the solo years, into the stripped-down duets, and back again.
Playlist for the week of April 13, 2026:
00:00:00 Bob Weir – Bob Weir – “Bob Weir on Ripple”
00:00:42 Grateful Dead – “Ripple” 00:08:02 Bob Weir – “Playing in the Band”
00:15:38 Grateful Dead – “Sugar Magnolia”
00:18:55 Grateful Dead – “Truckin’”
00:23:58 Grateful Dead – “The Music Never Stopped”
00:28:31 Grateful Dead – “Hell in a Bucket”
00:34:06 Grateful Dead – “Loose Lucy”
00:39:30 Bob Weir -“Lazy Lightnin’”
00:42:30 Bob Weir – “Looks Like Rain”
00:50:21 Bob Weir – “Only a River”
00:55:46 Bob Weir – “Black-Throated Wind”
01:01:27 Bob Weir – “Supplication”
01:05:47 Weir & Wasserman – “Easy to Slip (Live)”
01:12:31 Weir & Wasserman – “KC Moan (Live)”
01:16:14 Weir & Wasserman – “Looks Like Rain (Live)”
As the year comes to a close, we take a moment to remember some of the musicians we lost in 2025—artists whose voices and instruments shaped the music we carry with us, often without realizing how deeply they’d settled in.
There were so many losses this year that I could have easily put together more than one show. The music you’ll hear tonight is a culling—not by importance or influence, but by resonance. These are the songs that stayed with me, the ones that surfaced when I sat quietly and listened back.
Today’s show isn’t meant to be comprehensive. It’s personal. This is dedicated to all the people we’ve lost in 2025.
We’re living through a time in this country marked by noise, confusion, and a kind of willful ignorance and cruelty that makes everything feel louder and harder than it needs to be. The challenges are real. The suffering is real. And some days it feels like we’re drifting further from one another instead of closer.
In moments like this, music doesn’t fix anything—but it reminds us that care, imagination, and human connection have always existed alongside the madness. These songs carry evidence of that.
The show ends with Brian Wilson performing “Love and Mercy.” As 2026 approaches I believe that choosing to practice love and mercy in the new year is a rational response to a complex, wounded world, because they reduce conflict, preserve human dignity, and create the conditions in which real understanding and change can still occur.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of visiting my dear friend John Abramson in Boston to collaborate on a show. John and I had been friends for over fifty years, sharing countless moments and, always, a deep love of music. Growing up in Forest Hills, Queens gave John a direct line to both the Doo Wop tradition and the folk music of Greenwich Village in the 1960s, and he spent much of our friendship turning me on to both genres. His knowledge was encyclopedic, his passion endless. This show grew out of that collaboration.
Just a few days after we recorded it, John was hospitalized, gravely ill. He returned home on Friday to be with his wife and passed away on Saturday night. This show is dedicated to John— to our friendship, to our shared passion for all kinds of music, and to the love I carry for him.
This week Next To Silence enters the mesmerizing world of Piano Circus — six pianists seated around a circle of grand pianos, where rhythm becomes landscape, repetition turns to revelation, and minimalism meets maximal energy.
Piano Circus was founded in 1989 by six British pianists — Chris Fitkin, Timothy Seddon, Max Richter, John Metcalfe, Kate Halsall, and Joby Talbot — who came together to perform Steve Reich’s Six Pianos. The group emerged from London’s vibrant contemporary music scene, blending classical discipline with minimalist experimentation, and quickly became known for their daring six-piano arrangements and collaborations with composers across the UK, Europe, and the US.
Playlist for the week of November 3, 2025:
00:00:00 Chris Fitkin; Piano Circus — Sextet
00:09::48 Steve Reich; Piano Circus — Six Pianos
00:34:29 Kevin Volans; Piano Circus — Kneeling Dance
00:43:03 Timothy Paul Seddon; Piano Circus — 16
00:47:43 Robert Moran; Piano Circus — Three Dances: Lithuanian Spin
Boho Dreams of Space and Time 