Performance Today®

Every summer, about 100 of the best young orchestral players in the country get the honor of attending the National Orchestral Institute in College Park, Maryland. It's a month of intense study where the musicians/students learn the unique skills needed to be in an orchestra. On today's episode of PT, we'll hear conductor Manuel López-Gómez lead the NOI class of 2022 in a performance of Daphnis and Chloé by Maurice Ravel.

A couple of weeks ago, we lost a bright light in the world of music. Violinist Geoff Nuttall passed away after several months of treatment for pancreatic cancer. He was 56 years old. When Geoff picked up his violin, he didn't just play music—it filled him up and poured out of him. Today, we honor the memory of Geoff Nuttall, and we’ll hear him and his colleagues in the St. Lawrence String Quartet perform Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15.

Violinist James Ehnes says that the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is one of his favorite places on earth. In an essay for Strings magazine, Ehnes wrote that the GTMF is a place "...where the physical beauty is beyond description, and where the quality of music-making defies rational explanation." On today's show, we'll hear James Ehnes and the Grand Teton Festival Orchestra play the Violin Concerto by Samuel Barber.

The Dies Irae is a hymn from the old Latin Mass for the Dead. Composer Kenji Bunch once misspelled it by a letter - he wrote the word "Irie" - which, in Jamaican patois, loosely means "everything is okay." Join us for music with a positive spin on today's show: Dies Irie by Kenji Bunch.

A couple of weeks ago, we lost a bright light in the world of music. Violinist Geoff Nuttall passed away after several months of treatment for pancreatic cancer. He was 56 years old. When Geoff picked up his violin, he didn't just play music—it filled him up and poured out of him. Today, we honor the memory of Geoff Nuttall, and we’ll hear him and his colleagues in the St. Lawrence String Quartet perform Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15.

A starburst is a galaxy undergoing an intense rate of star formation activity, with stars being created hundreds or thousands of times more rapidly than usual. Join us today for music that bursts with energy and color: Starburst by Jessie Montgomery.

Composer Clarice Assad was doing some research on the internet and ran across a book of spells and rituals. She was inspired to write a piece based on the rituals she found in that book. On today's episode, we'll take you to a concert in Atlanta to hear The Siren's Seduction from the Book of Spells by Clarice Assad.

Composer Joaquín Turina wrote a musical portrait, imagining what went through the mind of a Spanish bullfighter right before stepping into the ring—the prayers one might say before facing mortal danger. We'll hear "La oración del torero" (The Bullfighter's Prayer) by Joaquín Turina on this episode of Performance Today.

Composer and violinist Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, lived in Paris in the late 1700s. He was one of the first musicians of African descent to play a prominent role in European classical music. On today's show, we'll hear one of Bologne's fourteen violin concertos from a concert presented by the Minnesota Orchestra.