Classical 95.9-FM WCRI

The Stonington, CT Porch Fest is the subject of this week's program, featuring Dan Brandl, Executive Director of The LaGrua Center, a partner in the event. We talk about the many musical acts involved, as well as the art show happening simultaneously. For more information, you can go to www.lagruacenter.org

In this week's Jazz After Dinner, Joe features Organist Jimmy Smith from his 1958 Blue Note Records recording titled “Softly As A Summer Breeze.” 

Theatre By The Sea's fourth production of the 2026 season, “You’ve Still Got A Friend”, a world premiere, is the subject of this week's program, with Seth Greenleaf, Director, and Taylor O’Toole, Associate Director. We talk about the musical/concert and listen to some of the show's very popular songs, which run until September 13. For more information, call (401) 782-8587 or go to www.theatrebythesea.com 

Join us as Ocean House owner and award-winning author Deborah Goodrich Royce has a conversation with The New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author Beatriz Williams about her new book, When You Loved Me.

Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of Husbands and Lovers, The Summer Wives, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, A Hundred Summers, the Wicked City series, and several other works of historical fiction, including five novels in collaboration with fellow bestselling authors Karen White and Lauren Willig. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA in Finance from Columbia University, Beatriz worked as a communications and corporate strategy consultant in New York and London before her first novel was published in 2012. Beatriz’s books have won numerous awards, have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and appear regularly in bestseller lists around the world. Her essays have appeared in magazines such as Real Simple and Southern Living, among others, and she regularly reviews fiction for the New York Times Book Review.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Beatriz now lives in southeastern Connecticut with her husband and four mostly-grown children.

About the Book:

A love story steeped in New England legend.

Local history insists that a legendary pirate buried his treasure somewhere beneath Windward, the decayed Cooper estate on Winthrop Island, but Lucy Cooper never trusted the fable that broke her family apart. When a widowed Lucy returns with her young daughter to grieve her estranged father, she discovers catastrophe: the property’s mired in debt she can’t repay, and Ben Ressler has unexpectedly turned up on her doorstep.

Thirteen summers ago, a teenaged Lucy never meant to fall in love with Ben, a Dartmouth football star vacationing nearby at the Peabody estate, and the object of an all-consuming crush by Laura Peabody, Lucy’s best friend. Those few weeks were the best and worst of Lucy’s life, dooming her friendship with Laura. Now Ben’s returned to live quietly in the Peabodys’ caretaker lodge, after a fatal accident ended his dazzling NFL career. He’s also the last person who saw Lucy’s father alive.

As Lucy reconstructs her father’s troubling final days, she uncovers his research on the frozen winter of 1717, when a desperately wounded pirate sought refuge on Winthrop Island with an enigmatic healer. To Lucy, this history points the way to a different kind of treasure: how to heal the fractures of the past and earn a second chance at love. But just as Lucy’s long-buried emotions sear to the surface, a shocking turn of events reveals that someone else on the island will do whatever it takes to claim the fabled plunder.

A timeless story of love and atonement, When You Loved Me maps both a centuries-old treasure hunt and the intimate territory of the human heart, weaving together past and present as only Beatriz Williams can.

For more information about Beatriz Williams, visit beatrizwilliams.com, and for more on Deborah Goodrich Royce and her new release, Best Boy, along with information about the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com

In this week's episode, we talk about The Coast Guard House, a great New England restaurant and landmark. Elisa Wybraniec, Wine Director, talks about the great food, the wine menu, and the wide variety CGH offers. We listen to music by Grammy-nominated pianist Joe Parillo to set the mood. For more information, call (401) 789-0700 or go to www.TheCoastGuardHouse.com 

This week on Jazz After Dinner, Joe is featuring The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band from their 2005 Blue Note Records recording, titled “Live At The Village Vanguard.” 

Join us as Ocean House owner and award-winning author Deborah Goodrich Royce has a conversation with New York Times Bestselling author Luanne Rice about her new book, Until Midnight.

Author Bio:

Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty-nine novels, including three YA novels, that have been translated into thirty languages. Until Midnight is her most recent.

Rice’s books often center on love, family, nature, and the sea. The Beautiful Lost deals with teen depression, something Rice experienced herself.  She is an advocate for mental health awareness, a participant in McLean Hospital's Deconstructing Stigma: A Change in Thought Can Change a Life

Several of Rice's novels have been adapted for television, including Crazy in Love for TNT, Blue Moon for CBS, Follow the Stars Home and Silver Bells for Hallmark Hall of Fame, and Beach Girls for a mini-series on Lifetime.  Rice contributed a monologue to Motherhood Out Loud, a play that premiered at Hartford Stage Company and was performed Off-Broadway and at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.

In 2002, Connecticut College awarded Rice an honorary degree.  Her papers are located in the college's Special Collections Library. A profile of Rice appeared in Connecticut College Magazine, Fall 2014.

She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from St. Joseph College in West Hartford, Conn. 

In June 2014, she received the 2014 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award for excellence and lifetime achievement as a literary artist.  Christopher Plummer, actor, and Tim Prentice, sculptor, were also celebrated, and Rice was thrilled to share the moment with them. 

Rice, an avid environmentalist, is honored to be a creative affiliate of the Safina Center. Visit her links page to find out more about the causes and organizations that offer support and work for a better world.

About the Book:

Until Midnight is the thrilling new novel from the Amazon Charts and New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice (Last Night, The Shadow Box and Last Day). The Reid Brothers are back…

Rhode Island’s picturesque Ocean House is the perfect setting for Kate Woodward and Conor Reid’s fairy-tale wedding weekend. But there may not be a happily ever after.

When an old friend of Conor’s disrupts the rehearsal dinner and reveals a blindsiding secret—a claim that she and Conor share a child—Kate calls off the wedding, thinking things can’t get any worse. Until the next morning, when that same woman is found with her throat slashed.

As investigators close in and suspicions mount, the evidence points to a mystery deeper than anyone imagined. The soundproof boat with telltale signs of something sinister. The mansion on the hill that lures in young girls and doesn’t let them go. A secret society whose members might be more familiar than not. And the truth of the dead woman’s past that draws Kate and Conor into a nightmare.

For more information about Luanne Rice, visit luannerice.com, and for more on Deborah Goodrich Royce and her new release, Best Boy, along with information about the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com

This week, Joe is featuring GRP All Star Big Band from their 1992 GRP Records recording titled “GRP All Star Big Band.”

This week, the Colonial Theatre of Westerly is the subject of the program with Marion Markham, Director, and Miles Menendez, Stage Manager. We talk about their current production of “The Roommate” and the next program, “Merry Wives,” and listen to music that relates to those performances. For more information, you can go to colonialtheaterart.org

In this week's WCRI Kids Hour, your host Jamie listens to Peter & The Wolf to celebrate Frisson returning to Newport Classical in a free, outdoor, family-friendly concert perfect for kids and adults alike on August 15, 2026 4:00 PM at the Newport County YMCA. This fun and interactive hour features a playful retelling of Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev, alongside popular favorites including Gershwin’s Summertime, The Pink Panther, selections from Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha and Maple Leaf Rag, as well as excerpts from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Pirates of the Caribbean. For more information visit www.newportclassical.org