Special Programs: Upcoming Community and Cultural Programs

Airs Friday, March 30 at 7:00 p.m.  With over 83,000 employees, the State of Louisiana is the largest employer in the state. The retirement systems covering these current employees and former state workers have accumulated more than $18 billion in unfunded debt. Last year public employees’ pensions cost Louisiana taxpayers $1.78 billion. Governor Jindal has put forth several proposals this legislative session to transform the system to regain solvency. How will the changes affect current state employees and new hires? And can the system be revamped without breaking the promise to those who have provided years of public service?

Airs Thursday, March 29 at 8:00 p.m. In music, an arrangement is the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. In this episode, we listen to one of the finest jazz orchestras in our time performing a variety of great arrangements. Under the direction of Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has nearly twenty years of recording and on the road experience. Their Spring 2007 tour brought them to the Savannah Music Festival, where they played this program of both classic and new arrangements.

Airs Wednesday, March 28 at 7:00 p.m.  The U.S. Supreme Court has been hearing arguments in the one of the most important legal and policy cases of our generation. Today the justices will consider the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.  The Supreme Court  will release audio of today's arguments and NPR will offer one-hour wrap specials tonight of the arguments. Jennifer Ludden, NPR correspondent, will host tonight special. We will have edited highlights of the arguments before the justices. Tentative guests include Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg, Health Policy Correspondent Julie Rovner and National Political Correspondent Mara Liasson.

Airs Tuesday, March 27 at 9:00 p.m. His bloodline alone makes him something of a prince of jazz. But his legendary father died when he was a toddler, and Ravi Coltrane blazed his own trail on the tenor saxophone; indeed, his ideas about composition and flow and tone sound most at home with his own generation of improvisers. His quartet has developed a new set of repertoire for a new album in the works. We get a good midterm progress report from the Harbor Stage at the 2011 Newport Jazz Festival. Recorded live at the Newport Jazz Festival on Sunday, August 7.

Airs Monday, March 26 at 8:00 p.m.  Stories of coming of age, rituals and rites of passage, and secret identities of women who crossed a line, broke a trail, changed a tide.