The Polish pianist Ignaz Friedman (1882-1948) was considered not just the one of the top but one of the supreme piano virtuosos of his time. As were so many of his contemporaries, he was a child prodigy and he left

Nestled in the middle of the country, the state of Minnesota conjures bitterly cold temperatures and towers of snow; hooded parkas and polar snow boots. But the icy squalls generate a spawning ground for artists. Hailing from Minnesota are authors

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

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was regarded in the early 20th century as France’s greatest living composer. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire but his time there ended badly. He entered as a piano student at age 14 but by age 18,

Pange lingua (Alice Halstead, soprano; Clare College Choir, Cambridge; Graham Ross, cond.) A recent article in The Guardian which asserts that musical notation (i.e. the dots, lines, squiggles and marks on a written or printed page) is “a cryptic, tricky