Much has been made of Marin Alsop’s appointment as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2007. And rightfully so, as she was the first woman to hold this position with a major American orchestra. Her achievement forever raised

Oh go on, get over it. You clicked on it, you’re ready to scoff and get angry, and you’re sceptical as shit about anything I could write that might convince you to think otherwise. But let me invite you for

Claude Debussy writes, “I love music passionately. And because I love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth, an open-air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the

The chaconne or ciacona in Italian, is a dance with a double life. When it first appeared in Spain in the late 16th century as a transplant from the New World, it was a quick-tempo dance song, where the texts

On occasion, failure to win a major international competition can be beneficial for an artist’s career. Such was the case with the British pianist Freddy Kempf, born in Croydon to a German father and a Japanese mother on 14 October

Recording Film and TV Music Behind-the-Scene Cast your mind back to the last movie or TV show you watched. Chances are there was music of some kind, enhancing the mood, providing suspense at cliffhangers, setting the scene or underscoring a

The biblical narrative of the New Testament has been called the “greatest story ever told.” And while the story of Jesus Christ is deceptively easy to understand, it is also the most difficult to interpret. One such interpretation premiered on

On 22 September 1830, Frédéric Chopin invited all of musical Warsaw to his home for a dress rehearsal of his E-minor Concerto. The rehearsal was enormously successful and a press review announced, “I hasten to bring a piece of good