Celebrate the stories, customs, and music of the holidays with KIOS!
Coming Monday, December 23rd at 8 p.m., Jazz Piano Christmas kicks off Christmas Week. Felix Contreras hosts this annual NPR holiday tradition highlighting jazz pianists and their favorite seasonal music at the Kennedy Center.
KIOS is also proud to present A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, an extraordinary and memorable service of word and music from the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge, England. Hosted by Michael Barone, it's a presentation of Biblical readings, carols, and related seasonal music presented by one of the world's foremost choirs of men and boys performed in an acoustically and architecturally renowned venue. A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols airs Tuesday, December 24th at 9 a.m. and again Christmas Day at 9 a.m.
At 11 a.m. on the 24th, we present Yule Like This. Enjoy a better holiday through science! Fir tree needles embedded in carpet are a holiday headache. Why not decorate a genetically-modified, needle-retaining tree instead? It’s just another way that science is relevant to the holidays. How about science experiments on fruitcake? There’s a competition that includes launching it with a pneumatic device, running a heavy electric current though it, or blasting it with a blowtorch. Meanwhile, physics provides insight into those tricky how-does-he-do-it questions about Santa’s delivery rounds.
On Christmas Day, following a re-airing of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, KIOS presents Christmas with the Morehouse and Spelman Glee Clubs at 11 a.m. One of the great holiday traditions in America, the choirs of Morehouse and Spelman Colleges -- two of the most prestigious historically black institutions in the nation -- get together to present a spine-tingling concert program. This encore presentation features the best works of the last several years. It's a joyous celebration of the schools' tradition of singing excellence, with their trademark mixture of spirituals and carols. Korva Coleman hosts.
Then at noon on the 25th, it's A Very Crooner Christmas. For all fans of the Great American Songbook, it's a special collection of some favorite songs for Christmas by some of the best known crooners, including Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra, and more. We’ll also hear the story behind some now ubiquitous Christmas songs, like “White Christmas,” “The Christmas Song,” and “I Heard The Bells On Christmas” Day.”
On Thursday, December 26th at 8 p.m., we present Hanukkah Lights. The NPR favorite returns with all new Hanukkah stories, and with hosts Susan Stamberg and Murray Horwitz.
And rounding out our holiday offerings are Capitol Steps: Politics Takes a Holiday at 8 p.m., and Toast of the Nation, ringing out 2019 and ringing in 2020 from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. An NPR tradition every New Year's Eve since the 1970s, Toast of the Nation is the perfect audio complement for the occasion. It's festive jazz you can party to, all night long. This year we are featuring some of the best jazz collectives playing today. We'll hear the Baltimore Collective recorded live at The Keystone Korner, The Michael Leonhart Orchestra at The Jazz Standard, The SFJAZZ Collective in San Francisco and The Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra in New York City.