Classical music

For years, singer and musician Laufey knew she wanted to be a performer but struggled to find an audience. The child of an Icelandic father and a Chinese immigrant mother, Laufey sometimes felt out of place in Iceland. That's when Laufey began posting videos of herself singing jazz standards while also playing cello, guitar or piano.

Jon Batiste joins Terry Gross from behind the piano to talk about his new album Beethoven Blues, in which he re-imagines Beethoven's compositions.

Yo-Yo Ma, along with his cello, which he'll be playing. He's the most famous contemporary cellist and perhaps the most revered in the U.S. His best-known recordings are of the Bach Solo Cello Suites, which he's recorded three times - in 1983, 1997 and 2018. He's performed with orchestras around the world, but lots of people who pay no attention to classical music know Yo-Yo Ma because he's performed in so many different settings.

Bradley Cooper stars as composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in the new film "Maestro," which Cooper also directed and co-wrote. Yannick Nezet-Seguin served as the film's conducting consultant. He conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the Orchestre Metropolitain de Montreal.

Watts, who died July 12, was born in Germany to a Hungarian mother and an African American father. He became famous at age 16 after performing with Leonard Bernstein. Originally broadcast in 1985.

Alsop talks about the rejection she faced on the way to becoming the first woman to lead a major American orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony. She's now the subject of a new documentary, The Conductor.

Nézet-Séguin chose Verdi's Requiem for his 2012 inaugural performance as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He says the piece now helps him find a sense of connection during the pandemic.

Concert halls and music venues around the world have been shuttered due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but before closing its doors, the Philadelphia Orchestra gave one last performance on March 12 — to an empty concert hall. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin describes the experience of playing in a vacant hall and hearing silence at the end of each piece. And we listen to a 2019 interview with Yannick.

Counter tenor Anthony Ross Costanzo sings in what's considered a woman's range - in the range of the castrati, men who maintained their high voices by being castrated before puberty. He's about to star in the Philip Glass opera 'Akhenaten.'

Ever since he was a little boy, Yannick Nézet-Séguin knew he wanted to be a conductor. He likens the feeling to something "almost like a religious call." "Making music in the group is what animates me," he says.
Now 44, Nézet-Séguin is the music director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, two of America's most storied musical institutions.