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WQXR and WNYC Studios Announce a New Season of “HELGA”

Podcast Features WQXR Host and Critically-Acclaimed Singer HELGA DAVIS Leading Everyday Conversations with Extraordinary People

Guests include On Being host KRISTA TIPPETT, Grammy Award-Winning Musician/ Composer ESPERANZA SPALDING, Fashion Industry Trailblazer BETHANN HARDISON, Legendary Singer-Songwriter JUDY COLLINS, and Visual Artist STANLEY WHITNEY 

Debut Episode Available Here

(New York, NY – April 14, 2020) — Today, WQXR and WNYC Studios release a new season of HELGA, a podcast from critically-acclaimed singer, artist, and WQXR host Helga Davis.

In HELGA, Davis shares revealing and intimate conversations with an eclectic roster of artists, musicians, writers, and creatives. They share stories of struggle and challenges, resilience and victories, providing inspiration and hope during uncertain times. These thoughtful and thought-provoking conversations expand our world and our imaginations as we explore what we think we know about each other. 

This season’s debut episode features a conversation with Krista Tippett, journalist, author, and host of On Being, the Peabody Award-winning public radio show and podcast that explores what it means to be human. In the episode, Davis and Tippett have a wide-ranging discussion about faith, family, love, and life — revealing many deeply personal insights about their respective creative outlets and reflections on how to positively impact society. Tippett says of Davis’ intimate interviewing style, “We’ve just plunged into this conversation I never have, and I’m going to go there with you.”

Additional guests include:

  • Judy Collins, singer and songwriter
  • Bethann Hardison, fashion model and activist
  • Esperanza Spalding, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and composer
  • Stanley Whitney, artist
  • Maury Rubin, Founder of City Bakery 
  • Ranky Tanky, Grammy Award-winning quintet
  • Elizabeth Alexander, poet and President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation 

“It is an awesome undertaking to sit before a person, even a person I know well, and hear their story,” said Host Helga Davis. “I’m not sure whether I have chosen my guests, or if they’ve chosen me. Perhaps their name came up in conversation, a book, or in one case, through something I ate! But once I said it out loud, I knew. I just knew. These conversations tell the stories of their lives. Our lives. I am so excited to take our listeners with us on this path and to encounter them together.”

Helga Davis is a New York-based performer whose interdisciplinary work includes theater, opera, and fine art. In 2008, Helga joined WNYC to host overnight music. She won an ASCAP Multimedia Award for her work on WNYC’s 24:33, an all-day festival of composer John Cage’s recorded music, interviews, and live performances. She has hosted live shows and conducted conversations with Pulitzer Prize-winning composers including John Luther Adams, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, as well as with Cornel West, Kronos Quartet, Krzysztof Penderecki and the 2015-2016 artists-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. 

Davis was principal actor in the 25th-anniversary international revival of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s seminal opera Einstein on the Beach. Wilson describes her as “a united whole, with spellbinding inner power and strength.” She also starred in Wilson’s The Temptation of St. Anthony, with libretto and score by Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon (Sweet Honey in the Rock). Collaborators and collaborative works include Where We Lost Our Shadows by Du Yun, Oceanic Verses by Paola Prestini, You Us We All by Shara Nova and Andrew Ondrejcak, Salt by Missy Mazzoli,  and The Blue Planet by Peter Greenaway. She is the recipient of the 2019 Greenfield Prize in Composition, a 2019 Alpert Award Finalist, and is the 2018-21 visiting curator for the performing arts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

HELGA is available on wnycstudios.org/Helga and all other platforms where podcasts are available. Episodes will be released every Tuesday and Friday through May 8, 2020.

ABOUT WQXR

WQXR is New York City’s only all-classical music station, immersing listeners in the city’s rich musical life on-air at 105.9FM, online at WQXR.org and in the real world via live events and broadcasts. WQXR presents new and landmark classical recordings as well as live concerts from Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic, and broadcasts essential destination programs including New York Philharmonic This Week and Young Artists Showcase. WQXR is also the co-producer—along with the Metropolitan Opera—of the critically-acclaimed podcast Aria Code, hailed by The New Yorker as “illuminating …accessible…immediately pleasurable.” As a public radio station, WQXR is supported through the generosity of its members, donors and sponsors, making classical music relevant, accessible and inspiring for all.