By Eric Gorfain Moments before you walk onto the Hollywood Bowl stage for the first time, it hits you: You’re about to perform on the stage the Beatles transformed from an antique amphitheater into the legendary venue that represents, to…
Edward Gardner set to take the reins at the start of the 2021 season By Megan Westberg British conductor Edward Gardner will soon have his name added to a distinguished list of London Philharmonic Orchestra conductors, including Adrian Boult and…
Influential Dutch pioneer in historically informed performance practice dies at age 85 By Megan Westberg “Use your imagination before you play a note,” cellist Anner Bylsma once told students at a master class, “know more about it than just the…
In a story, “Abused, then Mocked,” recently reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Canadian violinist Lara St. John alleges her teacher, Jascha Brodsky, at the Curtis Institute of Music, repeatedly sexually abused her when she was a student there, and that…
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Player Ray Chen Title of Work Being Studied Sonata for Solo Violin No. 3 “Ballade” Composer Eugène Ysaÿe Date Composed 1923 Name of edition studied G. Henle Verlag Ysaÿe becomes especially interesting to explore as a violinist after you’ve tackled…
By Catherine Bent As choro—samba’s instrumental precursor—gains international popularity, many string players are drawn to its charms and challenges. It’s a good vehicle for classical players seeking a path toward improvisational confidence. Whatever your motivations, the experience and joy of…
By Inge Kjemtrup It sounds like a fantasy dreamed up by a record-label executive after a three-martini lunch: a concerto by world-famous jazz trumpeter and bandleader Wynton Marsalis, written especially for the Scottish-born violinist Nicola Benedetti. But it isn’t a…
By Cristina Schreil “We cellists sort of have a frustration with Mozart,” says Blaise Déjardin. The principal cellist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra notes how the composer didn’t write any major sonatas or concertos for cello. “If you discover Mozart [as…
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It takes a special kind of virtuosity to learn the last of Bach's Cello Suites on a standard cello. That’s because it wasn’t written for a cello with 4 strings.
By Cristina Schreil The first time violinist Yukiko Ishibashi encountered the Stradivari she now plays, it was an emotional lightning-bolt moment. There were tears. “At the first moment when I played it I felt, for the first time in my…
By Thomas May Writing string quartets feels like a homecoming for Caroline Shaw. Deeply rooted in early formative experiences, her love of the medium serves as a kind of creative anchor. Amid the slipstreams and demands of a dizzyingly successful…
By Emily Wright There is a scene in the first Harry Potter movie where the young wizard is tasked with purchasing his first wand. The setting is not unlike many old-fashioned violin shops: the smell of wood; stacks of dusty…
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By Laurence Vittes The Aspen Music Festival and School’s eight-week, 400-event summer season for 2019 is exploring questions of American identity by including 28 orchestral works and concertos, 27 chamber-music works, and two operas related to America. The festival’s theme…
By Stephanie Powell If her Instagram hasn’t caught your attention, her music surely has. What do The Lion King, Academy Award–winning composer Hans Zimmer, Barbara Streisand, and woolly mammoths all have in common? Tina Guo. Guo is a 33-year-old Grammy-nominated…
By Laurence Vittes Imagine an 18-minute piano quintet in which the central movement is a seven-minute-long, slow Kyrie second movement and the three flanking movements are brilliant short tours de force—you’ve got Pierre Jalbert’s Piano Quintet. Jalbert’s Quintet is one…
The Yamaha Young Performing Artists, a program dedicated to recognizing young rising musicians and offering them career guidance, has announced its 2019 winners. Eleven winners were chosen from a worldwide pool, including violinist Samuel Vargas from Acarigua-Araure, Venezuela. Each year…
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For decades the American composer Florence Price (1887–1953) was a footnote in music-history books. After a renewal of interest in women and minority composers in the past two decades and the 2009 discovery of a cache of Price’s music in…
After 30 years together as a group—with a total of 19 albums, countless appearances on others as guest artists, thousands of live performances, and hundreds of thousands of touring miles under their collective belt—the innovative Swedish folk band known as…
Many might assume that Cynthia Phelps’ quest for a new viola was an instrument shopper’s dream. The principal violist of the New York Philharmonic since 1992, Phelps learned at the start of her tenure that the philharmonic would purchase the…
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