Jan Swafford

While Charles Ives was a music student at Yale in the 1890s, the question of finding an American symphonic music was coming to a boil. The celebrated Czech composer Antonin Dvorák had been brought to the U.S. mainly to teach us how to find an American ...

The pause can be the most devastating effect in music. Today, we hear about why well-placed silence can infuse music with humor, eroticism, or Zen-like anticipation. We hear why silence is golden. Joining us is Jan Swafford, a writer and composer who teaches at Tufts University; Loren Kajikawa, an ethnomusicologist ...