Anastasia Tsioulcas

A YouTube sensation whose song "Chicken in the Corn" has received more than four million views, Jamaica's Brushy One String has captured listeners' imaginations with his stripped-down style, as he uses his rich baritone to accompany a beat-up, single-stringed acoustic guitar.

Born Andrew Chin, Brushy has deep musical ...

If any band has figured out how to marry breakneck speed with astonishing chops, it's Fanfare Ciocarlia (pronounced "fan-FAR-eh cho-car-LEE-ah"). With a playlist that veers from traditional Romani (Gypsy) tunes to covers of "Born to Be Wild" and Duke Ellington's "Caravan," this brass band from northwestern Romania has set the ...

The prime minister of Ireland showed up for The Gloaming's first gig; that's how big the supergroup's formation has been for fans of Irish music. Here at NPR Music, Bob Boilen and I have been waiting anxiously for the band's first album ever since The Gloaming made its U.S. debut ...

A case stirring intense outrage in the classical music community and starting to gain steam in the mainstream press is getting more mysterious by the day.

On New Year's Eve, the popular classical music blog Slipped Disc, written by London-based Norman Lebrecht, published a story with an incendiary ...

The relationship between a teacher and a student can be transformative. It's a particularly important relationship in classical music. A teacher is part mentor, part manager — even a parental figure.

Recently, I had the unique opportunity to sit down with two piano greats who bring a special dynamic to ...

"World music" can mean pretty much anything. French club tracks. Field recordings captured on remote Pacific islands. Bollywood soundtracks. Argentine tangos. Or, for that matter, pop, traditional, classical or religious music from anywhere on the globe — as long as the lyrics aren't sung in English and the instruments aren't ...

The year may have suffered a couple of black eyes in the form of shuttered opera companies and orchestras in labor disputes, but as far as recordings go, don't let anyone tell you classical music is dying — the music and musicians are thriving.

2013 revealed a rich trove of ...

This wound up being a spectacular year for elaborate, lavishly packaged reissues. Given all the fabulous classical box sets that appeared this year, you'd think we were in some kind of boom era for music served up on compact discs. (2013? More like 1993.)

Why? Well, there's always the mercenary ...

One of Africa's biggest hitmakers, Tabu Ley Rochereau, a star with a honeyed voice who went on to become one of the continent's most successful music impresarios, died Saturday. He never truly recovered from cardiovascular problems two years ago, and died at a hospital in Brussels after being ...

With the holidays upon us, our friends at member station WQXR invited me along with Washington Post chief classical critic Anne Midgette and Sony Masterworks producer Steven Epstein, the winner of 17 Grammy Awards, to sit down with host Naomi Lewin for a Conducting Business podcast ...

One of the most moving documents to emerge from the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination is a radio broadcast. It's WGBH's audio of what was supposed to be just another Friday afternoon concert given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra — which turned into an eloquent ...

Between the time when English composer Benjamin Britten began thinking about writing an oratorio that addressed the hell of war and the time he completed his War Requiem, the world was consumed by violence several times over. There were the horrors of WWII in Europe, the atomic bombings ...

An old video is suddenly making the internet rounds, because living vicariously through a performance nightmare is an ever-popular sport, I guess. (And we've collected plenty ourselves.)

It depicts pianist Maria João Pires in front of an audience (at a dress rehearsal?) with conductor Riccardo Chailly ...

Bryce Dessner is a man who slips in and out of musical guises with disarming ease. In the rock world, he's known as a member of The National (along with his twin brother, Aaron) and a founding member of Clogs. But in contemporary classical circles, Dessner, who studied ...

Today is composer and author Ned Rorem's birthday — his 90th, as it happens. It's an occasion that would be pretty easy to miss: Aside from some special concerts sprinkled here and there and precious few places elsewhere around the country this autumn, performers ...

The vocal quartet New York Polyphony delights in surprises — whether it's a matter of singing some rather raunchy Italian madrigals or making a video to introduce their album Times Go By Turns (released on BIS Aug. 27). The piece that the foursome of countertenor Geoffrey Williams, tenor ...

Last summer, we published a week-long series called "The Young Person's Guide to Making Music" in collaboration with our colleagues at the radio program From The Top. The idea was to provide guidance and suggestions for parents and kids just starting out in music, with ideas ...

As this summer lopes towards its inevitable close, we're still hankering for one last dose of a day at the beach: bright, sunny, full of daytime languor and the tantalizing promise of a fabulous night. And what sates that desire perfectly is the totally charming tune "Ce Soir" ("Tonight"), from ...

The British classical magazine Gramophone announced today the latest round of winners of its annual awards, now in their 90th year. With an expansive roll call of noteworthy albums ranging from early music to opera, the Gramophone Award honorees represent a tantalizing range of musical achievement — but it's a ...

In Minneapolis right now, even small matters have the potential to escalate — fast. Take the latest flashpoint in the Minnesota Orchestra's ongoing tribulations, which in about 24 hours has flared up a lot of ire in the classical community.

About a week ago, a semi-professional musician, blogger and longtime ...