When the young French baron Pierre de Coubertin first proposed a major international competition to revive the ancient Greek Olympic Games, reaction was decidedly mixed. Yet he stubbornly persisted and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) organized the first modern Olympic

Today, the German-Swiss composer Joachim Raff (1822-1882) is primarily remembered as an assistant to Franz Liszt in Weimar. In fact, he actually lived in the Villa Altenburg, Franz Liszt’s home in Weimar. He was Liszt’s secretary and copyist, and apparently

The modern era of the trombone as a solo instrument began on 6 April 1815, when Friedrich August Belcke performed a potpourri with obbligato trombone by Carl Heinrich Meyer with the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig. A critic for the Allgemeine

It started like a fairy tale, as it often does. In 1925, she was the hottest French musical ticket in New York City. Germaine Tailleferre had just arrived on a huge wave of personal and artistic success stemming from her

William Grant Still (1895-1978) is called ‘the dean of African-American composers’ and throughout his life, worked in all genres of music, from jazz, where he was an arranger for both W.C. Handy and Artie Shaw, to Broadway, where he played

He was frequently compared to Paganini, and in central European cello circles, Julius Klengel (1859-1933) was even called an institution. A natural-born cellist, he stopped having formal instructions at the age of 14! At fifteen Klengel performed for the first

We were looking at a score by the Finnish composer Perrtu Haapanen and found his performance directions very interesting for his 2014 work Compulsion Island, commissioned by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. His instructions for the strings are very specific

Beginning in the late 18th century, something magical happened in Paris on Friday! As a contemporary observer wrote, “Friday is the day that was adopted by most artists as the day to entertain; on this day, everyone visits their painter.