Aria Code is a podcast that pulls back the curtain on some of the most famous arias in opera history, with insight from the biggest voices of our time, including Roberto Alagna, Diana Damrau, Sondra Radvanovsky, and many others. Hosted by Grammy Award-winner and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Rhiannon Giddens, Aria Code is produced in partnership with The Metropolitan Opera. Each episode dives into one aria — a feature for a single singer — and explores how and why these brief musical moments have imprinted themselves in our collective consciousness and what it takes to stand on the Met stage and sing them. A wealth of guests—from artists like Rufus Wainwright and Ruben Santiago-Hudson to non-musicians like Dame Judi Dench and Dr. Brooke Magnanti, author of The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl—join Rhiannon and the Met Opera’s singers to understand why these arias touch us at such a human level, well over a century after they were written. Each episode ends with the aria, uninterrupted and in full, recorded from the Met Opera stage. Aria Code is produced in partnership with WQXR, The Metropolitan Opera and WNYC Studios.
He Sang/She Sang is a new podcast from WQXR for the opera-curious and opera superfans who want to know what all those big voices are really singing about. The podcast follows the radio broadcast season of the Metropolitan Opera with a weekly roundtable chat that discusses the plots, characters, music, productions, social significance and great performances of that week’s opera. Following the Met’s radio broadcast season, He Sang/She Sang will dive into the new productions of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Rossini’s William Tell, the Met premiere of an opera by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and fan favorites by Verdi, Puccini and Mozart. He Sang/She Sang is hosted by Merrin Lazyan and Michael Shobe, with appearances by superstar soprano Anna Netrebko, Met Opera tenor Stuart Skelton, WQXR hosts Jeff Spurgeon and Nimet Habachy, BBC 3 host Clemency Burton Hill and others.
Tags: Classical, interviews, metropolitan, music, opera, wqxr
Artist, performer and host Helga Davis brings a soulful curiosity and love of people to the podcast Helga: The Armory Conversations. She draws the listener into intimate conversations with artists, scholars and cultural change-makers, famous and lesser known, who join her to share the steps they’ve taken along their paths. These inspiring conversations expand our world and our imaginations as we explore what we think we know about each other. The new season of Helga is a co-production of WNYC Studios and Park Avenue Armory. WNYC Studios is a listener-supported producer of other leading podcasts including Radiolab, On the Media, and Death, Sex & Money. Part American palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory supports unconventional works in the performing and visual arts that cannot be fully realized in a traditional proscenium theater, concert hall, or white wall gallery.
> “We’re struggling. Our generation is trying to cope. Life is crazy.”
On this final episode of Helga: The Armory Conversations, I look to this next generation of artists. Three participants in Park Avenue Armory’s Youth Corps program, playwright Wilson Castro, visual artist Raven Garcia, and photographer Biviana Sanchez, sat down with me and as we made a space together, we experienced what it means to be vulnerable with oneself and with each other.
The Youth Corps Program immerses students in the art and creative processes of the Armory’s artists through paid, mentored, project-oriented internships. Starting in high school, the Youth Corps provides a test audience to the Armory Artist Corps during the lesson design process, offering feedback from a student perspective, serves as Front of House staff for all Armory events, assists in administrative projects in all departments, and completes and presents a term project. Building on this foundation and responding directly to student needs, the program also includes a post-secondary phase, including strategies to promote college persistence, professional development, and student leadership.
Categories: Arts, Society & Culture
Tags: artists, Classical, composers, design, interviews, music, Q2, sound, wnyc, wqxr
WQXR’s Jeff Spurgeon hosts this unique classical music podcast which introduces a featured classical recording in each episode. Recordings are drawn from several label catalogs, including hot new releases and classic accounts, plus performances from the WQXR studios, café and concert broadcasts.
Symphony No. 1 in B flat major, Op. 38 “Spring”
Robert Schumann
Philharmonia Orchestra
Riccardo Muti, Conductor
Available on Arkivmusic.com
When it’s winter, we long for spring. So it makes sense that great music about spring would be written in winter, when we need it most. Maybe spring fever was part of the reason Robert Schumann was able to sketch out his Symphony No.1, the “Spring” Symphony, over just four days in January of 1841. And he did all the orchestration in a three-week space that February.
Something we know inspired Schumann was a poem by German writer Adolph Böttger. How inspiring was this poem? Here are two lines from the last stanza of Böttger’s poem: “O wende, wende deinen Lauf/Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf!” (“O, turn, O turn and change your course/In the valley, Spring blooms forth.”) But listen to how those German words and the opening notes of Schumann’s symphony go together. Schumann scored those words, didn’t he?
Schumann gave spring-themed titles to each of the four movements in this symphony: “The Beginning of Spring,” “Evening,” “Merry Playmates” and “Spring in Full Bloom.” He took the titles out before the symphony was published, but the work remains Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony. Here is the first movement, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Riccardo Muti.
Episodes of My Classical Podcast are available for download through the WQXR App.Download it for IOS and Android Devices.
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– This recording is provided courtesy of Warner Classics/Erato
Categories: Music, Society & Culture
Tags: Bach, Classical, download, free, j, music, Podcast, s, wqxr
Live-performance podcast which draws back the curtain on creativity and experimentation from Greenwich Village’s Le Poisson Rouge in New York City.
Tags: artists, Classical, composers, contemporary, design, interviews, le, music, new, Poisson, Q2, rouge, sound, wqxr