Playlists

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Sliding Around: The Trombone
We’ll explore more of the brass by looking at the trombone. The name is a combination of two ideas: tromba from the Italian for trumpet and -one, which is the Italian suffix for something large, so a trombone is a
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Vivaldi for Beginners: Twelve Pieces to Make You Love Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi was born in 1678 in Venice. Over the course of his career, he became one of the most popular and influential composers of the Baroque era. Here are a few background facts to get you started: He began
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The Brilliance of the Trumpet
For making noise long distances, there’s nothing like the trumpet. According to the Bible, after marching around the city of Jericho for 6 days, the walls came down on the seventh day, succumbing to trumpet-blowing and shouting. Research has shown,
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The Sweet and Virtuosic Flute
Added to our list of ancient instruments, starting with percussion and the harp, we have to add the flute. Starting from blowing on a hollow reed and then hollowed-out bones, the flute became an extension of the voice. The flute,
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Six of the Greatest Russian Women Composers
Global classical music audiences love music from Russia. It’s bold, it’s imaginative, it’s romantic. Consequently, composers like Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich, and others are beloved fixtures on concert programs, generations after their deaths. But those household names haven’t been the
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Tchaikovsky for Beginners: 12 Pieces to Make You Love Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on 7 May 1840 in Votkinsk, a town almost eight hundred miles east of Moscow. Nowadays he is remembered as music’s quintessential Russian Romantic, and a forebear to giants like Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich. Today
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The Earliest Strings and the Most Beautiful: The Harp
Once you get beyond banging two rocks together (percussion), one of the oldest instruments next invented was the harp. It’s a very simple concept of a frame with differing lengths of strings stretched across to create the pitches. This may
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Estonian Independence Day
24 February
The Republic of Estonia formally declared independence on 24 February 1918. That independence lasted the better part of one day, as the country was quickly occupied by the German Empire, and following World War II, Estonia was incorporated into the
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