This trumpeter and composer is celebrated for his film scores, especially for Spike Lee. His opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones is slated to open the new season at the Met. In this episode, we break format; instead of person, place, and thing, we talk song, song, and song. A conversation about three pieces of music. Continue reading »

Does genre give music history and context or is it merely confining? “Genre is BS. I’m sorry. It just is,” says this founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and artistic director of Silkroad. The story of Black string band music — fiddles, banjos, and Jane Austen. Continue reading »

Celebrated as a performer and composer, this Columbia professor is particularly noted for his computer music that draws on artificial intelligence. So is the computer a tool for making sound or a tool for thinking? Neither. “It’s actually a tool for investigating subjectivity.” A conversation made possible by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Continue reading »

His work with Talking Heads lofted him to the empyrean, and he just kept going, making art, music, movies, books. He’s been particularly fortunate in his collaborators – Brian Eno, Robert Wilson, Twyla Tharp.  Spike Lee filmed his Broadway show, American Utopia, which streams on HBO this month. Clearly, one of the silliest things F. Scott Fitzgerald … Continue reading »

This singer, songwriter, and author didn’t have an easy start. “I had a chaotic childhood, to put it mildly, an abnormal childhood.” Then she discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder. Little Therapist on the Prairie? Nope. A guide to an orderly life. Or so it seemed to a kid. The result: an impressively accomplished adult.  Continue reading »

This composer and musician admires the Dalai Lama but got a little anxious when asked to sing for him: “They locked me in my dressing room…then there was a monk that was sitting next to me kind of glaring.” A conversation at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Music: Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Carmen Rockwell. Continue reading »

I expected this opera director to be astute and eloquent, and he was. I did not expect him to do first-rate impressions of Tom Waits, William Burroughs, and his own father. (Be honest: neither did you.) At Pratt Institute, his alma mater. Music by Pat Irwin and Walter Hawkes.  Continue reading »

In the 1960s, he had a string of hits with the Shondells: “Hanky Panky,” “Crimson and Clover,” “I Think We’re Alone Now” – 23 gold singles, 9 platinum albums, 100 million records sold. Yet his record company simply declined to pay his royalties: $40 million. Tales of music and the mob. Continue reading »

This quartet performs in concert halls around the globe but still works the Balcony Bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “We’re a bar band,” say artistic directors Ralph Ferris (viola) and Dorothy Lawson (cello). What a band! What a bar! Plus a performance with Face The Music, all at the Kaufman Music Center. Continue reading »

If you’re wildly successful at age six, what do you do next? Eddie Brigati had a string of hit records with the Young Rascals – Good Lovin’, Groovin’, Lonely Too Long – all before 1970. OK, he wasn’t six but he wasn’t near retirement age either. So what did he do with the ensuing 50 … Continue reading »

She’s a composer and vocalist who’s performed with pretty much every orchestra on earth. He’s a composer best known for his electronic music, especially an early work, Silver Apples of the Moon. “Lawyer and Other Lawyer to Wed,” runs pretty much every NY Times wedding announcement. How did it omit theirs? Continue reading »

  This accordion virtuoso has brought American roots music across the globe. He sees the accordion as a symbol of immigrant triumph – Zydeco! Tex-Mex! – and as the instrument of 19th century colonialism. Paradox and polkas. And no darn Lawrence Welk.  PERSON: David Amram  PLACE:a synagogue in Azerbaijan  THING:his accordion  RANDY’S THING: The Impossible … Continue reading »