Brian Wise

This week’s picks include a look into obscure corners of the violin repertoire and yet another fine indie rock band from Montreal. 

Reprinted with permission from MusicalAmerica.com

NEW YORK -- George Manahan, who has been a fixture in the pit of New York City Opera for the past 12 seasons, will add a more visible podium in 2010-11, as music director of the American Composers Orchestra.

In recent years, entering the glass-enclosed atrium across from Lincoln Center could be a dismal experience, but now that bleak facility is a memory.

Our New Year's resolutions often never make it past that first January thaw. This year, consider a different action plan. Here are five ways you can become a better classical music fan--and participant.

The genesis of some holiday songs is pretty self-evident, but others don't reveal themselves so easily. Here are the stories of fifteen classic songs and carols. 

With applications for the iPhone and iPod touch multiplying at a dizzying rate, there is a small but growing slate of products for the classical music fan. Here are five standouts.

Like standing ovations, cheers of "bravo," and foot-stomping, booing is a ritual at concerts that can occur for all sorts of reasons -- a bad performance, an audience feeling betrayed, a misconceived production. While use of the term "boo" began sometime in the 19th century, heckling of one sort or ...

The Oscar nominees for best original score range from the exotic sounds of "Slumdog Millionaire" to the lush elegance of "Milk" and "Benjamin Button" to the colorful "Wall-E" and the violin-flavored "Defiance" (with soloist Joshua Bell). The Oscars ceremony will be held Sunday. [poll id="6"]

Slumdog Millionaire (“Jai Ho”) ...

New York, NY —

New York City Opera is known as a cheap and accessible venue for opera-goers. But its home at Lincoln Center is being renovated this season, and the company will essentially be closed. Without its roughly 120 performances, audiences and singers will have to look elsewhere.

WNYC’s ...

New York, NY —

New York City Opera is known as a cheap and accessible venue for opera-goers. But its home at Lincoln Center is being renovated this season, and the company will essentially be closed. Without its roughly 120 performances, audiences and singers will have to look elsewhere. ...

The notion of Denver’s music scene left me stumped initially. Denver has a music scene? Sure, many of us who follow the music industry are aware that the city is home to the country's second-largest arts complex, home to at least 11 groups. And yes, there are a smattering of ...

Okay, look - I'm a city boy, and I never liked country music. As far as I knew, country music was sappy songs about dogs, trucks, and gun racks. But I did like folk and bluegrass - the songs seemed old, and earthy. Well, the Nashville studios may have smoothed ...

Composers like Liszt and Chopin may have been the rock stars of their day but the idea of classical music at South by Southwest still can seem pretty jarring in this rock-drenched setting. A chamber concert in a downtown Austin church Wednesday night presented by the publishing house Boosey & ...

Austin is a city of weird contradictions. On one hand, it's a ramshackle jumble of thrift stores, head shops, fortune tellers, quirky little dive bars, and storefronts offering both bail bonds and Chinese take-out. You'll also find gleaming (sometimes gaudy) new ...

An action-packed week in Berlin has yielded five very busy shows about that city's music scene. Check out our visits with various musicians, journalists, producers, and others on the rock, cabaret, world-music and electronic music scenes.

Day One: Berlin: Is it Hot or is it Over? (November 5, 2007)

Originally uploaded by wnyc

For the intrepid music fan, a week in Berlin can be overwhelming in the best sense. After all, it's a city that finds room for at least 2,000 active bands, 50 theaters, seven orchestras, three state-funded opera ...