Aspen Music Festival and School Buzz

The Minnesota Orchestra will be the first major U.S. orchestra to play in Soweto, South Africa. The orchestra's tour of the country grew out of its conductor's work with youth orchestras there. (Image credit: Euan Kerr/Minnesota Public Radio News)

Watch the 19-time Grammy winner return to his lifelong passion for J.S. Bach, playing music from the Cello Suites and offering advice on the art of incremental learning. (Image credit: Samantha Clark/NPR)

If the celebrated cellist could soundtrack his life, the music would be J.S. Bach's six Cello Suites. Yo-Yo Ma explains why they mean the world to him while he played the music at the NPR offices. (Image credit: Samantha Clark/NPR)

Watch an excerpt from The Unchanging Sea , the latest commingling of filmmaker Bill Morrison's decaying reels of silent film and Michael Gordon's undulating music. (Image credit: Bill Morrison)

The celebrated artist and his husband, Scott Walters, are accused of drugging and raping a young singer in Houston, Texas, in May 2010. (Image credit: Brad Barket/Getty Images)

Need to beef up on Leonard Bernstein? Hear the musical polymath's most delightful tunes, from West Side Story classics to surprises from Aretha Franklin, Tom Waits and Selena. (Image credit: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Born 100 years ago on Aug. 25, 1918, Bernstein was a larger-than-life character — on stage as a conductor, at the piano as a composer, on TV as an educator and in a sometimes tangled personal life. (Image credit: Evening Standard/Getty Images)

The composer, whose music fused many styles with a singular voice, constantly broke new ground. He was the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for music. (Image credit: Luis Sinco/LA Times/Getty Images)

To mark the centennial of her father's birth, Jamie Bernstein talks frankly about her new memoir, tracking her life as the daughter of the legendary composer. (Image credit: Bob Serating /New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives)

Kahane's new album, Book of Travelers is inspired by a two-week train trip the composer took across America. Kahane discusses the album and performs a few of the songs in NPR's studio. (Image credit: Josh Goleman/Nonesuch records)

The versatile opera star will sing an Irish classic at the memorial service of Senator John McCain Saturday at Washington's National Cathedral. (Image credit: Rob Carr/Getty Images)

Watch the young Harvard grad dispatch some of the most "knuckle-busting" piano repertoire with uncommon panache and precision. (Image credit: Eric Lee/NPR)

The pianist merges jazz and poetry together to make a multi-movement work that explores themes of the human condition. (Image credit: Yasunari Rowan/Courtesy of the artist)

"The Star Spangled Banner" has been played at major sporting events as far back as the Civil War, even before it was officially named the national anthem. How and why did the tradition stick? (Image credit: George Rose/Getty Images)

After a five-month investigation, the New York City orchestra took action against oboist Liang Wang and trumpeter Matthew Muckey over unspecified misconduct. (Image credit: Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images)

The resourceful singer is unafraid to bring opera — and his high-flying top notes — to unlikely places, from sixth-grade classrooms to the offices of NPR. (Image credit: Morgan Noelle Smith/NPR)

Watch the ambitious countertenor sing music that spans more than 250 years, connecting the dots between David Byrne, George Frideric Handel and Philip Glass. (Image credit: Morgan Noelle Smith/NPR)

The Philharmonic launches its season with a new music director and executive director. The Metropolitan Opera's season starts with a young music director.

The resourceful Mexican jazz singer Magos Herrera partners with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, creating an album that's steeped in Latin American culture. (Image credit: Shervin Lainez/Sony Music)

Take an interplanetary trek through the English composer's symphonic blockbuster with the help of a conductor and an astronomer. (Image credit: NASA/Wikimedia commons)

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