Can you name an instrument used for an orchestral solo that used to be so common that nearly everyone owned one but now are quite rare? One piece of popular light music calls for an instrument that was in every

Once I entered an elevator with my red cello case. I swung it up so it stood upright. Although I tried not to make eye contact someone was still prompted to ask questions.

The remarkable Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura [Recycled Orchestra of Cateura] is a project from a village next to the Cateura landfill outside the city of Asunción, Paraguay, and is the subject of a new documentary entitled Landfillharmonic.

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

Lush forests and forbidding mountains covered in deep snow, together with sweet smells of roasting chestnuts and mulled wines inescapably conjure up images of Christmas time. The only thing missing in this idyllic Victorian winter scene is the rhythmic ringing

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