Anastasia Tsioulcas

For the past few years, member station Q2 in New York City has been enlisting listeners in a thought-provoking year-end poll. Forget the best music of the last year — what are the very best compositions of the last century?

What I really like is that by stipulating ...

Legendary Lebanese singer and movie actress Sabah, an icon across the Arab world for decades, died today in Beirut. Married at least nine times, this mega-star of stage and screen was both completely unconventional and wildly popular, making more than 90 movies and releasing more than 50 albums.

She specialized ...

What's some of the most exciting music from 2014?

Find out with our member station Q2 Music, which is hosting an evening dedicated to three important album releases from the year nearly past. The concert takes place at The Greene Space in New York on Dec. ...

"Did you know that every time musicians pick up their instruments, there are fireworks going off all over their brain?"

That's the launching point for a fantastic little video made by educator Anita Collins and animator Sharon Colman Graham for TED-Ed. What they explain is that while listening ...

News broke today of a clandestine exhumation of composer Frédéric Chopin's heart in Warsaw in April 2014. Presided over by a mix of scientists, clergy and scholars, this mysterious event took place in the middle of the night and seems, in its retelling, like something out of a ...

Joyce DiDonato — a Kansas native and lifelong Royals fan — happens to be one of the world's greatest opera singers. Here's what makes her so extraordinary.

As I scrolled through tweets about a panel on agricultural entrepreneurs at the SXSW Eco conference earlier this month, one caught my eye. The sender was Vance Crowe, Monsanto's director of millennial engagement.

Corporate America is currently caught up in a torrid infatuation with millennials, who befuddle and torment the ...

WOMEX – The World Music Expo – is kind of like a traveling SXSW for global music. Mostly an industry affair, with about 2,000 attendees from 100 countries, the five days of nonstop showcases, panel discussion, meetings, film screenings and schmoozing (did I mention the concerts? Concerts too) end up ...

On March 10, 2015, hear the eminent pianist in a recital of sublime works spanning the Classical-era elegance of Haydn and Mozart and the introspective Romantic drama of Schubert and Beethoven.

PROGRAM

• Haydn: Piano Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI: 50

...

Usually, the Latitudes feature is devoted to five new discoveries from the previous month. For September, I'm taking a different tack.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) recently wrapped up a three-week festival devoted to celebrating the legacy of the Nonesuch record label, which is celebrating its 50th ...

Mandolin maestro U. Srinivas, an astonishingly talented Indian artist who brought his Western instrument into the heart of traditional South Indian music, died Sept. 19 in Chennai at age 45. According to Indian press reports, he died of complications following a liver transplant.

Known alternately as "Mandolin" Srinivas or U. ...

The English conductor, keyboard player and musicologist died Wednesday at age 73. He used modern scholarship and keen musicianship to bring new life to works by Handel and Bach, Mozart and Haydn.

It's become a trope that artists aren't interested in being limited by genre — at least the really fascinating ones, that is. One of the most enjoyable current examples of this reach beyond stylistic divides is Almanac, the newest project from the string quartet Brooklyn Rider.

To celebrate its ...

When John Luther Adams' sweeping orchestral piece Become Ocean was performed at Carnegie Hall for the first time in May, it was also the first time the composer had attended a concert there. As Adams told my colleague Tom Huizenga in April, when Become Ocean won ...

International music competitions are full of nail-biting moments for young musicians seeking top prizes. But Japanese-born, Chicago-based flutist Yukie Ota encountered a peculiar distraction Monday as she played in the first round of the hugely competitive Carl Nielsen International Flute Competition in Odense, Denmark, which draws flutists aged ...

Throughout this month, the Brooklyn Academy of Music's signature Next Wave Festival is celebrating a record label with which it shares history and purpose: Nonesuch, marking its 50th anniversary this year. This festival within a festival kicked off with two of America's most influential composers, Philip ...

Throughout this month, the Brooklyn Academy of Music's signature Next Wave Festival is celebrating a record label with which it shares history and purpose: Nonesuch, marking its 50th anniversary this year. This festival within a festival kicked off with two of America's most influential composers, Philip ...

Call this an early autumn harvest: In the midst of the usual September deluge of new albums, we've been watching notable — sometimes terrific, sometimes not so terrific — videos that have come over the digital transom in recent weeks.

Our first pick was filmed as promotion for organist Cameron ...

This month's offerings for what you have to hear from Asia, Africa and Europe are a mixed plate. There are some new summer songs to catch up on, including a fabulous party tune, a very pretty number used in one of this summer's most talked about films and ...

Italian-American lyric soprano Licia Albanese, known for her deeply felt character portrayals, died Friday at her home in New York, her son, Joseph Gimma, told NPR Music Saturday. She was 105 years old.

Born in the Italian city of Bari along the Adriatic Sea, she became an American citizen in ...