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Tom Huizenga

The Mivos Quartet offers a new, colorful piece by Henry Threadgill and music by Robert Honstein inspired by the shimmering light at the Arctic Circle.


Bob Boilen/NPR

The Mivos Quartet gets colorful and creative in its Tiny Desk concert

Listen to the Story

Terry Gross

Michael R. Jackson's Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical is about a young Black gay musical theater writer named Usher, who works as an usher at a Broadway show — just like Jackson once did.


Teresa Castracane/Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Association with Playwrights Horizons and Page 73 Productions

'A Strange Loop' writer and composer started out on Broadway as an usher

20220721 SPCO Broadcast

On May 21, 2022, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra artistic partner, violinist, conductor and composer Pekka Kuusisto returned to the Ordway Center for a program featuring music by Cindy Cox, Louise Farrenc and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Listen to the concert now!


Courtesy Kaapo Kamu

Listen: Conductor and violinist Pekka Kuusisto returns to lead the SPCO

Near the anniversary of the first moon landing, films with an outer space theme.

To the Moon, Alice!

Lynne has been at this radio thing since 1984 when she fell into an historic job at KFAC AM and FM, the commercial classical station in Los Angeles.  She was the first woman staff announcer in the station's history, and it was such big news back then, it made the LA newspapers and national radio publications.  She is thrilled women in radio is no longer newsworthy.


Lynne Warfel

On the anniversary of the first Moon landing, this week’s episode of Saturday Cinema, with guest host Bill Morelock, features films with an interplanetary theme including tracks from ‘Star Trek,’ ‘The Martian’ and ‘Apollo 13.’ Listen now!


Photo Courtesy of NASA

"To the Moon, Alice!"

Kara Frame

Italian pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi, the most-streamed classical pianist of all time, brings his emotional and reflective music to NPR’s Tiny Desk.


Ludovico Einaudi shows why he's the most-streamed classical pianist ever in Tiny Desk concert

"That's where our story starts, but that's not where music starts."

"What we are hearing is a pale reflection of what Handel’s audience heard."

"We never look at a historical figure absolutely directly, do we?"

"America doesn't have a single ethnic stock." 

"Our story ends as it must. In the middle of things."

Hear the towering – and polarizing – author in conversation about his 4,000-page book, ‘The Oxford History of Western Music.’


San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty

Remembering Richard Taruskin, a writer who made you care about 1,000 years of music

Brian Eno's "Deconstructed" Pachelbel

Steve Seel is the host of YourClassical’s weekly SymphonyCast and the trailblazing music show Extra Eclectic. He possesses a broad knowledge of many musical genres, having hosted radio programs ranging from classical to jazz and even avant-garde music at radio stations around the country. Steve began his love affair with public radio at 24 working whatever shifts he could at his hometown station of WUSF-FM in Tampa, Florida, and from there worked his way to snowy Buffalo, New York, and its renowned classical station WNED-FM, where he hosted middays and the weekly experimental-music show Present Tense.  In 2005, Steve became one of the founding voices on Minnesota Public Radio's eclectic station, the Current. While there, he hosted afternoons and mornings, and conducted in-depth interviews with pop music luminaries ranging from Brian Eno to David Byrne to Tori Amos. Steve is a basement composer obsessed with all things both minimalist and slow, and might actually be incapable of writing anything that exceeds 75 beats-per-minute.


Steve Seel

Brian Eno turns Pachelbel’s ‘Canon’ into conceptual art on this week’s episode of Extra Eclectic, with host Steve Seel.


Desiree Martin/AFP/Getty Images

Brian Eno deconstructs Pachelbel's 'Canon'

New Classical Tracks - Alisa Weilerstein (Extended)

New Classical Tracks - Alisa Weilerstein

Julie Amacher's desire to introduce others to great music is what led her to radio. She began her professional broadcast career at a station in Sun Prairie, Wis. She went from rock 'n' roll to the Rocky Mountains, where she found her niche in public radio at KUNC in Greeley, Colo. Julie spent 13 years at KUNC, where she managed the announcers and their eclectic music format. During that time, she earned four national awards for best announcer. She joined Minnesota Public Radio in 1997 as an on-air host and also produces New Classical Tracks, a weekly podcast critiquing a new release each week. It airs locally at 7:15 a.m. Wednesdays and 5:15 p.m. Fridays.


Julie Amacher

In this week’s New Classical Tracks, cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan leave their “permanent stamp” on Beethoven’s complete cello sonata cycle. 


Harald Hoffmann/Decca

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan tackle Beethoven's sonatas

He wrote the spy theme in 1962 for the first 007 film starring the late Sean Connery, and it's been used in all of the movies since.


Staff

Remembering Monty Norman, the man behind the James Bond theme

Minnesota Beethoven Festival - Merz Trio 

On July 7, the award-winning Merz Trio presented a program of 19th- and early 20th-century masterworks, all quintessentially Viennese in style and teeming with boundary-breaking energy, as part of the Minnesota Beethoven Festival in Winona. Listen to the concert now.


Listen

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