Performance Today®

From ev'ry mountainside, Let freedom ring! On Memorial Day, we remember the people who've made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the American Armed Forces. Today, we honor those who preserve our freedom with music.

Public graduation ceremonies are almost universally cancelled this year, so we're throwing a radio party with music to celebrate this rite of passage, and some special messages for this year's graduates. On this episode of Performance Today, we're honoring the graduating class of 2020. Plus, Bruce Adolphe has this week's Piano Puzzler.

When Antonio Pompa-Baldi was four years old, his mother signed him up for piano lessons, but the teacher told Antonio he was too young. Antonio burst into tears, and then went on to prove himself. Now 40 years later, he has made a lively career for himself as a pianist. On today's show, we'll hear from a recent concert Antonio Pompa-Baldi gave during the Southeastern Piano Festival, in Columbia, South Carolina.

Public graduation ceremonies are almost universally cancelled this year, so we're throwing a radio party with music to celebrate this rite of passage, and some special messages for this year's graduates. On this episode of Performance Today, we're honoring the graduating class of 2020.

Composer Viet Cuong was inspired by renewable energy when he wrote Re(new)al, a concerto for percussion quartet. Each movement is based on a different source of power: water, wind, and solar. On this episode of Performance Today, it's music celebrating renewable energy, and everything that's possible when we work together.

Her name was Dulcinea, and she is the inspiration in one of the great stories of all time: Don Quixote by Cervantes. Dulcinea doesn't even appear in the novel, but just the idea of her fuels everything that Don Quixote does. On this episode of Performance Today, tune in for "Don Quixote y Dulcinea" by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ranki.

The young Beethoven borrowed a song that everybody was singing in Vienna, a tune from a popular opera. Beethoven made it very much his own by writing nine playful variations. On today's show, hear an all-star performance of Beethoven's Gassenhauer Trio, from a concert in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Composer Sheridan Seyfried wrote a double concerto for two violin-playing brothers, Timothy and Nikki Chooi. Seyfried wanted to express their special bond AND their individual personalities. On today's episode, hear an expression of what it means to be family: Sheridan Seyfried's Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra.

On this episode of Performance Today, hear a composition by Valerie Coleman named "Portraits of Josephine"... inspired by the life and times of one of the most famous entertainers of the 20th Century: Josephine Baker.