Igor Stravinsky first met Katherine Gavrylivna Nosenko in 1890. He was quietly drawn to “Katya,” who was by all accounts a soft-spoken and intelligent girl. They shared a number of interests, and found common ground in music, as Katya was

“My music is best understood by children and animals” Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) graced the cover of Time Magazine in 1948. The supporting article described him as a “Master Mechanic,” a man to be hired, on his terms, to write music

Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes hit Europe like a storm: no one had ever seen ballet taken to this level. Founded in 1909 by Diaghilev and lasting 20 years, the Ballet was based in Paris and traveled around Europe and to

Artists are taught tradition in order to innovate. While there are some discussions about tradition and innovation, they are both essential to the wellbeing of art, to progress and continuity. I like to think that one looks at the past,

We associate ragtime music with performers and composers such as Scott Joplin, confined by their poverty and marginality to the US. What we may not realize is how international this turn of the 20th century-style was and how influential it

Dwindling economic resources and the unprecedented sufferings inflicted by the “Great War” forced composers to search for new avenues of artistic and musical expression. Taking refuge in Switzerland, the young Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet introduced Stravinsky to the author Charles-Ferdinand

The appeal of Serge Diaghilev’s productions for the Ballets Russes is based on the novelty of Russian dance, and on its penchant for exotic subjects, many of them folkloric in nature. Igor Stravinsky scored a Parisian triumph for Diaghilev‘s troupe

In 1920, Mildred Barnes and Robert Woods Bliss acquired a historic estate in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., which they eventually named Dumbarton Oaks. They engaged an architect to renovate and enlarge the house, and designed a series of