Performance Today®

Composer Clarice Assad was born and raised in Brazil, but has spent the last few decades in the United States. When she's asked where home is, she says "The Americas." On this episode of Performance Today, hear Assad's "Without Borders," performed by the Chicago Sinfonietta.

Love and Death... it's all right there in the title: The Liebestod. On this episode of Performance Today, take a seat at the home of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to hear them perform the Prelude and Liebestod, from Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner.

American composer John Adams wrote a piece for clarinetist Michael Collins: "Gnarly Buttons." That unusual title is a half joking reference to how difficult it is to play the clarinet, which has all those difficult keys on it, those... gnarly buttons. On today's show, hear Michael Collins and members of the Minnesota Orchestra play this fun, yet emotional piece of music.

Benjamin Beilman plays a special violin, a Stradivarius, hand-crafted in 1709. He has the violin on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation, so eventually he'll have to give the violin back. On this weekend's show, Benjamin Beilman describes what it feels like to know that their time together is temporary; then hear him play a sonata by Eugene Ysaye, from a concert at the Music@Menlo Festival.

Gabriel Campos Zamora grew up with parents who played jazz, and now he is the principal clarinetist for the Minnesota Orchestra. Gabriel Campos Zamora gets the best of both worlds when he busts out some boogie-woogie with an orchestra backing him up; a toe-tapping Concerto by Artie Shaw, on this episode of Performance Today.

Picture Death playing his malevolent fiddle in the graveyard on Halloween night. The skeletons rise and do their annual clattering dance until the sun comes up next morning. It's Halloween...get into the spirit with the Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens.

At only 11 years old, cellist Jivan Ramesh is already a jack-of-all-trades.

Every week on our Piano Puzzler, composer Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer. On today's show, play along on; see if you can guess the tune and the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking.

In the classical music of North India, there are moments when singers really cut loose and show their vocal virtuosity. It's called a "tarana." Composer Reena Esmail has brought that idea and sound into a Western ensemble. Hear Tuttarana, by Reena Esmail, on this episode of Performance Today