David Ilana and I were invited to the Silk Road Piano Festival in Xian in 2014. Xian is famous for its thousands of terracotta soldiers buried in 210–209 BCE by a paranoid emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who wanted to make

Schoolteachers mold each new generation—what a responsibility. But when it comes to how we value educators who tops the list—the math or science teacher, the reading instructor or the basketball coach? In my book, music teachers are the heroes.

In the opera Don Giovanni, there’s a particularly cruel scene where the Donna Elvira, meeting Don Giovanni’s servant Leporello, has to hear how she is just one of a large number of women that the Don has seduced. In the

During the opening measures of the famous chorus, members of the audience glanced around anxiously, checking to see who would be first to rise to their feet. Then someone in the balcony stood, and someone else, and suddenly the whole

Musical instruments in China were traditionally classified into 8 groups delineated by the material used in the instrument: Silk, Bamboo, Wood, Stone, Metal, Clay, Gourd and Hide. We will look at selected instruments in six of these groups in this

Film music has always tread that fine line between classical and not-classical. Should it be considered ‘light’ classical or not classical at all? But film music itself is an interesting genre. There are so many films for which the music

Two cellists, coming from neighboring Balkan countries, studying in England but at different conservatories, are starting to make us look at cellists and the highly versatile instruments they play in a very new way. No longer just the lower support

Well-known for his nine symphonies, Antonin Dvořák was one of the first composers to infuse his music with the folk idioms of his native land, enchanting us with Czech, Moravian and other Slavic melodies. He wrote an enormous number of