Performance Today Features

Violinist Robert McDuffie talks with Fred Child about the future of music education.

It's September, and the school year is starting up, so here's a classical quiz.

When Andrew Staupe was a child he spent a lot of time onstage, not as a musician, but as an actor and dancer. One day he heard another performer playing a Chopin nocturne on a piano backstage and was transfixed. Today he's a doctoral candidate in piano performance at Rice University and a finalist in the American Pianists Association Classical Fellowship Award. Staupe joins host Fred Child in the studio to talk about life on the stage and play music by Debussy, Mendelssohn and Christopher Walczak.

Innovative American composer John Cage would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year. One of his most influential pieces is called 4'33." PT host Fred Child spoke with author Kyle Gann about how this relatively short piece of music changed everything that came after it.

Even though she's only 9 years old, Elizabeth Aoki was one of the standouts at the 2012 Aspen Music Festival and School. You can hear this extraordinary young violinist as she gives her first-ever interview and plays part of a Wieniawski concerto, a piece that's challenging for soloists of any age.

Irish pianist John O'Conor is on the piano faculty at the Aspen Music Festival and School. And he's a big champion of the music of fellow Irishman John Field. O'Conor shares the story of John Field, and plays nocturnes by Field and Alexander Scriabin.

As a young man, composer John Harbison was passionate about both jazz and classical music. At the time, he felt he had to choose between the two, and picked classical. Times have changed, and nowadays he's comfortable combining the two in his music. Hear Fred Child's onstage interview with John Harbison at the 2012 Aspen Festival, along with Harbison's performance of his own music.

Robert Spano is Music Director at the Aspen Music Festival and School. He and violinist Robert McDuffie teamed up for a beautiful Brahms adagio as part of a very special event at Aspen, billed as an Evening with Performance Today and Fred Child. Music and conversation with McDuffie and Spano, including tales of McDuffie's teenage pranks when he was a student at Aspen.

Romanian pianist Ursuleasa died recently. She was just 33 years old. In 2008, Ursuleasa joined host Fred Child for an engaging conversation and performed music by Chopin and Rachmaninoff.

In 2010, Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva took the music world by storm when she won the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. She's been incredibly busy ever since, playing concerts and recitals all over the world. One of her recent stops was to the PT studios. In her interview with host Fred Child, she talks about her love of Chopin, of travel, and one of the secrets to her success in Warsaw (try not to focus on the judges).