What do Duke Ellington, United Airlines, and the K Pop group Red Velvet share in common? They've all covered George Gershwin's piano concerto, Rhapsody in Blue. First premiered in 1924, the piece became an immediate hit for the way it blended American jazz with the European symphonic tradition. Gershwin had a number of successes as a composer in his day—his ... Show More
Oct 7
Taylor Swift’s Showgirl Sound: How to actually listen to the album
Taylor Swift's twelfth album has sparked endless speculation about who each song is "really about," but that might be the wrong question entirely. The Life of a Showgirl isn’t biography, it’s polyphonic auto-fiction, where Swift writes from multiple character perspectives while b ... Show More
1h 9m
Oct 3
The Power of the Trio (ft. Trousdale live at USC)
There's no lead singer in Trousdale. The trio of Quinn D'Andrea, Georgia Greene, and Lauren Jones, has shared vocal duties equally since they started singing together as students at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music. Since then, they've touring the ... Show More
48m 39s
Oct 6
Brahms and Rzewski for amateurs
SynopsisThe first performance of the Liebeslieder — or the Love Song Waltzes — for piano four-hands by Johannes Brahms took place on today’s date in 1869. The performers were two distinguished soloists: Clara Schumann, widow of composer Robert Schumann, and Hermann Levi, a famous ... Show More
2 m
Feb 2024
Faure's Piano Quartet
Synopsis
On today’s date in 1880, a quartet for piano and strings was premiered in Paris, with its composer, 24-year-old Gabriel Fauré, at the keyboard. Now in 1880, many Parisians knew two things about Fauré: first, that he was a talented pupil of Camille Saint-Saens; and second ... Show More
2 m
Oct 2023
Premiere of Brahms' 'Schicksalslied'
Synopsis
On today’s date in 1871, Hermann Levi conducted the premiere of a new choral work by Johannes Brahms titled Schicksalslied, or Song of Destiny. It’s a setting of a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, contrasting in its first part the blissful Greek gods on Mount Olympus and in ... Show More
2 m