Jonathan Storm: Performing arts get TV spotlight

Well, shut my mouth and knock me over with a feather: WHYY premieres a whole new home-grown weekly series tonight at 9. On Canvas  is just the kind of thing the big public station in the nation's fourth-largest TV market should be doing: a showcase of the variety of performing arts in the region.

Given that WHYY likes to think of itself as the overarching institution that brings everybody around here together, the show emphasizes diversity. So it won't be covering the Philadelphia Orchestra when it gets back from China next month, nor the Tom Petty concert at the Wachovia Center next week. But it does cover Intercultural Journeys at Ursinus College tonight. Also on the schedule, among others: classical Arab music at Swarthmore College, Bob Musso's Transonic Band, and the Philadelphia Ethical Society's 10th annual Banjo Gathering, featuring Cheick Hamala Diabate on the Malian ngoni, a lute that is ...