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Today, our Soundcheck Smackdown series dares to enter the annual battle over Christmas music. Joining us are Dr. Gerard J. Grzyb, seasonal music coordinator for the public radio station WRST-FM at the University of Wisconsin, and Nigel Rodgers, the president of Pipedown International.

A Soundcheck producer is responding ...

The band Of Montreal recently visited Soundcheck to play live and to talk about their latest album, "Skeletal Lamping." (Check out the full segment here.) After the broadcast, frontman Kevin Barnes and guitarist Brian Poole talked about their favorite on-stage costumes -- and Kevin revealed a secret about shaving ...

I think we were all surprised yesterday at the strong reactions provoked by our segment on Auto-Tune, the little software program that corrects pitch but which, when used as a “special effect,” produces that weird, warbling, almost robotic sound ...

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Bach’s 'The Art of Fugue' (Deutsche Grammophon)

The iconic image of a classical pianist in 2008 might have been that of Lang Lang, performing center stage, in the lavish opening ceremonies to the Beijing Olympics. Meanwhile, ...