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Judi Vinar first saw Bobby McFerrin on the Grammy Awards back in the 80’s. “I was blown away,” she said by phone from her home in the Twin Cities. “When I first heard Bobby do a solo piece, you know, a lot of what he does is jump around with a bass note and octave note on top and somehow he fits th…

David Temperley composes tuneful, expressive pieces in a classical mold, drawing on his experiences with chamber music and influences from the popular music he grew up listening to on the radio. He's also a music theorist who writes about rock music, including in his latest book The Musical Languag…

To get to know Maria Newman, you have to understand who her father was. She is the daughter of nine time Academy award-winning film composer Alfred Newman, who wrote the 20th century Fox fanfare. Her brothers and cousin are equally famous; there’s Randy Newman of Toy Story fame, Thomas Newman, who …

The characters in Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème start out as broad archetypes: the moody poet, a fun-loving musician, a lonely young woman dreaming of love, a flirtatious party girl… They're drawn in broad strokes, and it’s easy for everyone to see something of themselves, or their friends, in …

Composer Margaret Brouwer lives in Ohio, near Lake Erie. She loves the natural beauty of the Great Lakes and she’s worried about them. She has composed her love for Lake Erie -- and her concerns for its future -- into a musical work called "Voice of the Lake ."

The summer solstice is “Make Music Day,” which is being celebrated in Rochester and around the world. If you’re downtown on Friday afternoon, you might notice a group of people standing in a circle with their arms linked. They’ll be doing the Heart Chant by composer Pauline Oliveros.

I see myself as an educator, and over time I have also seen myself more broadly as a part of the healing community, that music is a healing force. My participation in music and my representation of a living entity, bringing music to life and engaging with audiences, is a healing act. This is Profes…

Meet Rachel Waddell. She’s the Director of Orchestral Activities at the University of Rochester . She describes music as a “performing tool to bring people together" and views her work with the orchestras at the University of Rochester’s River Campus as a chance to have people challenge themselves,…

Lynn Harrell has been a musical performer for most of his life. He started playing cello at a young age, and his professional career has spanned decades: he started playing in the Cleveland Orchestra at the age of 18, where he was then principal cellist from 1964 to 1971, and he has played solo and…