Anastasia Tsioulcas

Kurt Masur, a former music director of the New York Philharmonic, died Saturday from complications from Parkinson's disease at a hospital in Greenwich, Conn. His death was announced by the New York Philharmonic.

Masur was 88 years old; he had been suffering from Parkinson's disease

2015 was a year in which global music (whatever that term does or doesn't mean) overlapped even more than usual with other genres — and the results were dazzling.

Much of that broadening has evolved organically. Some of the "roots" artists I've selected for this year-end list, like ...

Say what you will about the demise of the CD and the battles between downloads and streams, in 2015 the flow of classical music recordings seemed as full and rich as ever.

Devising a list of just 10 was downright painful. We were forced to leave so many terrific albums ...

When you think of Cuban music, contemporary classical most likely isn't the first — or possibly even fifth — genre that springs to mind. But a group of American composers and musicians couldn't resist an opportunity to travel to the island to present their own music and seek out their ...

A battle between upbeat, finely crafted pop and politically minded hip-hop seems to be what's shaping up for the biggest prizes at this year's Grammy Awards. The nominees were announced this morning, in advance of the awards ceremony on Feb. 15.

Leading the way with 11 total nominations is

In mid-November, I was lucky enough to accompany a group of American composers and performers traveling to Cuba for the Havana Contemporary Music Festival.

Going to Cuba was a longtime dream for me, especially as it has been an incubator for incredible music and dance that draw upon ...

Groundbreaking trumpeter and singer Cynthia Robinson, a co-founder of the pivotal funk band Sly & The Family Stone, died Monday night at age 69. Her death was confirmed by her bandmate and friend Jerry Martini, another co-founder of the Family Stone.

In October, Robinson disclosed that she was ...

Over the course of a career that lasted some sixty years, pianist, producer and songwriter Allen Toussaint's music and sound became a hugely influential force for artists working in many different genres. Toussaint died on Monday night in Madrid, at the age of 77.

As the news ...

#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. On Fridays, we highlight some of the best stories.

This week, we bring you four ...

Born Hanan Hamdi, Namika is a German singer from a Tamazight (Berber) Moroccan family. Her debut single, "Lieblingsmensch" (Favorite Person), went to No. 1 in Germany last month with its catchy tune and lighthearted feel.

Among the compliments Namika ladles on her guy is one that's endearing in any language: ...

Getting "Hotline Bling" to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 was something that Drake really, really wanted. He said so, very publicly, last week on Instagram:

The "Hotline Bling" video, which was originally only posted on Apple Music, proved to be endlessly remixable, ...

Paolo Angeli has a whole toy shop aboard his guitar: He's got hammers, pedals, propellers, springs, drone strings and even a couple of cell-phone ringers at his disposal.

The base of it all is a six-stringed instrument from his native island of Sardinia, and the seed of Angeli's ...

Imagine the band Haim meeting the late Ofra Haza, with some EDM thrown in for good measure. That's the wave the fast-rising Israeli sister act A-WA — Tair, Liron and Tagel Haim — rides. (Yes, their last name is Haim, too.) They pull inspiration ...

Over in London, the Independent's arts editor, David Lister, recently published a scathing commentary about the paucity of valuable or even interesting information in artist biographies. He wrote it in a fury after paying £4 to obtain the program for a Proms concert he attended, featuring the excellent ...

A big-budget Iranian biopic depicting the childhood of the Prophet Muhammad has already faced a fair amount of backlash. But now the film's director and its composer — the hugely popular Indian musician A.R. Rahman — have had a fatwa, or religious edict, issued against them by ...

English vocalist Sam Lee has an amazing backstory: He found his way to singing professionally after stints as a wilderness survival expert and a burlesque dancer. But what really matters are his mesmerizing performances, as well as his incredible ability to connect with people — certainly with the ...

When it comes to artistic partnerships, there's a lot to be said for the fireworks of musicians joining together for the first time. But there's another kind of collaboration that can yield profound pleasure: a recording with two artists who know each other deeply, in a relationship that has unfolded ...

An American punk drummer has become an unlikely historian of the Armenian community in Aleppo, Syria. And he's recently released a recording of their religious music — just as the city is crumbling during Syria's ongoing civil war.

Jason Hamacher doesn't seem like the kind of guy who ...