Anastasia Tsioulcas

Three documentaries up for Academy Awards Sunday place musicians front and center — and trace the profound impact that music-making has on the trajectories of their lives.

All three films are stunning and as distinctive as the personalities they illuminate: the 109-year-old Holocaust survivor and pianist profiled in the short ...

Globally, it's been a very busy month for music, especially at the intersection of art and politics. There's the brand-new Pussy Riot video from Sochi published Wednesday, as well a real groundbreaker of a video released on Valentine's Day by the Iranian legend Googoosh — one ...

It's no secret that gold-winning American ice dancers Meryl Davis and Charlie White have become favorite faces in Sochi. But it turns out that the charming White has done his share of woodshedding along with his hard work on the ice.

He celebrated yesterday by fulfilling ...

Chinese-born pianist Yuja Wang isn't one to do anything in half measures. So when we invited her to record a performance in a room at the Steinway & Sons piano factory, she showed up in Queens that frigid morning with her A game.

The 27-year-old ultra-glam artist wore ...

Among the eight TV pilots Amazon has just put up online — which they will whittle down to two series based on viewer feedback — is a pop-culture oddball called Mozart in the Jungle. Created by Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman and Alex Timbers and with a cast including ...

Classical music has managed to take center stage at sports events in the last few weeks. Soprano Renée Fleming sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl two weekends ago. And the Russian-born Anna Netrebko, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, appeared at ...

It was a perfect success story: A composer overcomes his deafness to become a widely beloved cultural icon. No, we're not talking about Beethoven. This was the story arc for 50-year-old Mamoru Samuragochi, one of Japan's most popular contemporary composers, whose music became a best-selling album and is ...

You love the music you love, but you'll love it even more if you listen closely.

Analysis will never trump feeling: The way a piece or a song moves us is ultimately what makes music lovers (addicts, really) come back for more. But the more you understand how composers and ...

The enduring power of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is undeniable. It's been the soundtrack for everything from the Tiananmen Square protests to the opening of the Berlin Wall.

Musicians from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) recently used this very famous music for a more localized purpose, infusing ...

Claudio Abbado, one of the most sought-after conductors of his generation, died Monday in Bologna, Italy, at age 80. His death was announced by a spokesperson for Bologna's mayor, saying that it followed an unspecified long illness. Abbado had been diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2000; following surgery for that ...

She's probably not among your first, or second, or 10th, or 20th-round guesses, but the NFL just announced that American soprano Renee Fleming will sing the national anthem at Super Bowl XLVIII on Feb. 2.

Fleming is the first-ever opera singer to be given the honor. ...

It's not often that a band composed of stock characters can be a successful live act, so one that boasts "The Mysterious Lady," "The Tiger" and "The Skipper" — all, of course, in costume — might make a newcomer think the shtick is more enjoyable than the music.

But The ...

If you've encountered banjo phenomenon Abigail Washburn before, you might know that she's loved China for a long time. In fact, it was her plan to study law at Beijing University that led her to her chosen instrument a little more than a decade ago: She'd wanted to bring "something ...

Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan is an eminently cool addition to the indie-pop landscape. She was the co-founder of the groundbreaking duo Soapkills, which might have been the very first electronic band in postwar Beirut. Now a solo artist and based in Europe after a childhood split between Lebanon, Kuwait, Abu ...

What happens when an artist mixes the suavity of Congolese rumba, the sweat and funk of James Brown, lilting soukous guitar, the visual flair of the sapeurs and the sensibilities of 21st-century hip-hop? The charismatic Congolese-Belgian singer Baloji has one answer. As he sings in the ...

It's hard to know what to make of the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha when it first arrives on stage — but, oh, those tall, furry hats! But from the first moment the group starts performing, it's hard not to get caught up in the magic it weaves.

Founded by former underground ...

Imagine the 1950s big-band mambo sound of Perez Prado refracted through the lens of the 21st-century Latino experience in the U.S. That gives just a tiny clue to what's in store during a set with this Arizona band, led by keyboardist, guitarist and vocalist Sergio Mendoza. The group also features ...

Touareg guitar rock, desert blues: Whatever you call it, it's shorthand for a certain style from the Sahara that has triumphed at festivals and venues across Europe and North America, thanks to acts like Tinariwen and Bombino.

Most of the "desert blues" bands, though, hail from Mali, and it's much ...

The Amsterdam quintet KiT twists Afro-Caribbean tradition into an accessible, club-ready style. KiT, or Kuenta i Tambu — "Stories and Drums" — takes music from the Caribbean island of Curaçao, merges it with European dance-floor music and kicks it all into high, sweaty gear.

With frontwoman Diamanta von Lieshdeck rapping ...

For decades, Hassan Hakmoun has been the foremost ambassador of the Gnawa people and their incredible musical and spiritual traditions. A native of Marrakech, Hakmoun grew up in a Gnawa family, whose ancestors were brought from West Africa to North Africa as slaves in the 15th and 16th centuries. At ...