American pianist Jonathan Biss appears tonight at E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall in Akron, presented by the Tuesday Musical Association. Widely regarded for his artistry, musical intelligence and deeply felt interpretations, winning international recognition for his orchestral, recital, and chamber music performances and for his award-winning recordings, Mr. Biss performs a diverse repertoire ranging from Mozart and Beethoven, through the Romantics to Janácek and Schoenberg, as well as works by contemporary composers such as György Kurtág. Mr. Biss has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Leonard Bernstein Award presented at the 2005 Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Wolf Trap's Debut Artist Award, Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. He was an artist-in-residence on American Public Media's Performance Today and was the first American chosen to participate in the BBC's New Generation Artist program. Please join Tuesday Musical for a pre-concert lecture beginning at 6:30 pm by Guy Bordo, Director of Orchestral Studies at the University of Akron School of Music. The Program includes:  BEETHOVEN Sonata in f minor, Op 2 no. 1 
SCHOENBERG Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19 
SCHUMANN Waldszenen, op. 82 
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BERG Sonata, op. 1 
BEETHOVEN Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 LISTEN TO THE WCLV: Cleveland INTERVIEW

Pinning down the music of cellist Maya Beiser is a tricky proposition. In concert, her multitrack, prerecorded loops dance around her cello like variations in a mirror and her repertoire includes classical texturalist Phillip Glass and Led Zeppelin. Certainly, her music is as disruptive to the idea of classical music as it is beautiful. Thursday night, Beiser brings her All Vows performance to San Antonio with the help of bassist Gyan Riley and Wilco drummer and composer Glenn Kotche. Over the phone, we spoke with them about the All Vows program, looping and the intersections of classical and pop.  READ THE FULL San Antonio Current INTERVIEW

Listen to Julie Amacher's New Classical Tracks interview. New Classical Tracks is a Syndicated feature airing Nationally on PRI: Classical 24 & Statewide on Minnesota Public Radio.   READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW Maybe like me, you love to escape by watching a good film. Violinist Daniel Hope believes that on many levels, Hollywood is the quintessence of escape. After spending 15 years studying and exploring composers who didn't escape the Holocaust, on his latest release, Escape to Paradise, Daniel Hope takes a closer look at those who did. And for many of these composers, Hollywood was their escape and their exile. Daniel says this whole idea hits very close to home. His parents escaped South African apartheid and moved to Great Britain, after his grandparents had escaped Hitler from Berlin and lived in exile in South Africa. "My maternal grandparents were living in Berlin in the 1930s," Daniel says. "They were kicked out of Berlin because of their Jewish heritage. And my grandfather was a lighting designer, a lighting engineer under Max Reinhardt. And Max Reinhardt offered him the chance to go to Hollywood with him in 1934 where he was going to do the Midsummer Night's Dream at Hollywood Bowl and then make the movie. But he'd been beaten up by Nazis on the streets in Berlin and he said he wanted to go as far as possible away from Germany. America was not far enough, so he chose South Africa. "So this idea of escape and displacement has always played a strong role in my family, certainly for the last century. And on the album I wanted to, on the one side, show some of this music that these composers had created. But I also wanted to look at the development and creation of the so-called Hollywood sound and try to find out more about it - where it came from, what's left of it today, and to examine the journey it has taken over these 100 or so years. "It's really amazing to think that there is a whole generation of music that was wiped out by the Nazis, that does not exist, at least officially, in our list of, let's call it '20th century music'. This whole era. And with the Hollywood composers, I find it equally fascinating because they were in this mindset of looking to the future. If you look at Korngold, the kinds of pieces he was writing in the 1920s and '30s, they were extremely ahead of their time. And yet when he arrived in Hollywood, the requirement was this big, symphonic music. So, in a sense he was sent back in his development. And yet Hollywood gave him such a fantastic opportunity at the same time. Not just an opportunity to write music, but also to save many of his relatives. And Korngold said, 'I will compose film music until Hitler is gone.' And the minute Hitler was gone, he sat down and wrote the Violin Concerto." Erich Korngold's Violin Concerto was not initially well received. Over time, Daniel says it has earned the respect it deserves. "'More Korn than Gold,' of course, is the famous quote that one of the critics gave as a pan after the performance, which I think is terribly, terribly unfair," Daniel says. "It's also interesting that people say it sounded like film music. I think it's actually the other way around - film music sounds like Korngold. And that's the role of Korngold in Hollywood, as with Max Steiner. I see them as the two great pioneers of the Hollywood sound - [and] let's not forget Waxman. As far as the Violin Concerto is concerned, of course the great Jascha Heifetz is the one who championed it and pioneered it. And yet then it went through a kind of lull for a certain period of time until Itzhak Perlman picked it up and did phenomenal recordings of it. "The fact that the concerto is dedicated to Alma Mahler, to his old days of Vienna … there is very much this nostalgic feeling in the concerto, and the orchestration from beginning to end is absolutely masterful." There's a big brass fanfare near the end of the third movement of this concerto, which Daniel says you may recognize for more than one reason. "That's a paraphrase from the film King's Row - a 1948 film, if I recall correctly. And that is almost exactly the same phrase that John Williams uses in Star Wars. There is a direct lineage somehow in this music: John Williams studied with Castelnuovo-Tedesco, another one of these exiled Hollywood composers. He was one of the reasons I had to have him on the CD, quite apart from the fact that I love his music. Schindler's List - this idea of escape which accompanies the album was very intrinsic." There are also several chamber music arrangements on Escape to Paradise that caught my ear, including a piece titled, "Reminiscences from Franz Waxman's film, Come Back, Little Sheba." "Waxman's music is so beautiful," Daniel says. "He was a master of styles - almost chameleon-like in styles, where he could adopt any style at a moment's notice. And yet the signature and the way in which he approached it were done with such wonderful technical means. This particular arrangement was one that had already been done - all the other arrangements on the album we actually made specifically. But this is one, Mr. Waxman Jr. told me about and sent to me. And as often with this music, I find, it has an element of nostalgia, an element of looking back." Escape to Paradise is filled with nostalgia that will no doubt stir memories for you, just as it has for Daniel Hope. "I think being able to immerse oneself in this time - that, for me, is the greatest joy. Whether that was in the recording studio or discovering new pieces or having contact with the second generation. Both the son and daughter of Miklos Rosza wrote to me. I was able to interview people from that time who are still alive. I was granted access to Paramount Studios and their archives and was able to find manuscripts by Korngold that had not seen the light of day in 70, 80 years. I would say it was a combination of things. It was being able to find out more about a time that I find so fascinating. Being a film addict, it was also fantastic for me to go back and watch some of these glorious films in their over-the-top eccentric way in which they were made and yet they have such fantastic emotion and vision. "And then also a connection to my grandfather, who could quite possibly have gone with Max Reinhardt. He decided not to, but he could have gone to Hollywood. He might have been there. And so that brought me, in a sense, closer to him."

Each week KDFC: San Francisco members can download a free mp3 from some of the biggest releases in the world of Classical music. In honor of Mozart's birthday on January 27, flutist Robert Stallmann has gathered some musical friends for a program of Mozart's music for flute and orchestra. Download Robert Stallman and friends performing the Rondo from Mozart's "Haffner" Serenade from his Cosi fan flauti CD right here! 

Bill Frisell will play the Aspen District Theatre on Tuesday. The 63 year old guitarist has been reminiscing about his childhood in Colorado recently. The roots of his renowned genre-spanning career were in Denver in the early 1960s, where a young Frisell discovered surf music and first picked up a guitar. His most recent album – titled "Guitar in the Space Age!" – returns Frisell to the foundation of his musical life and the songs that shaped him. "I'm looking at the music that got me really fired up about music in the first place, but also realizing I've never really played it," Frisell said in a recent phone interview. The record includes Frisell's inspired instrumental interpretations of songs like the Byrds' "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and the Kinks' "Tired of Waiting for You," along with surf classics like the Chantays' "Pipeline" and the Beach Boys' "Surfer Girl," which was the first record Frisell ever bought. The album also includes Frisell's take on the Boulder-based surf rock band the Astronauts' 1963 hit "Baja." It was a time when a band from a landlocked state might make surf music, and an equally land-locked kid, like Frisell, might obsess about surfing based on that music. READ THE FULL Aspen Times REVIEW

Barbara Padilla finished as the Season 4 runner-up on "America's Got Talent," where fans connected as much with her operatic voice as her survival story. The fantastical sequence of life events seems ripe for a movie script or even a miniseries.  The classical crossover soprano was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1996 while attending the University of Guadalajara's School of Music in her hometown in Mexico. After several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, a relapse brought her to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for a second opinion. She underwent more treatment here - and at the same time auditioned for and was accepted to the University of Houston Moores Opera Center on a full scholarship. "Barbara is the very epitome of a Cinderella story, truly, in real life," says Peter Jacoby, former music director of the Moores Opera Center. "Her courage in light of her cancer was consistently heartwarming. If anyone could beat the disease, I felt it was this wonderful, cheerful, courageous and talented girl who had the spunk to seek out her destiny, against all odds, and find her niche in Houston." "I think you have to dream big," Padilla says. "If I realize that it has the potential to help people, then I'll do it. I think everybody is on this Earth for a reason, for a mission. You have your own thing to do. And if you figure out, and have the opportunity, do it. And do it massively." Her debut album, a lovely showcase for Padilla's rich, expressive voice and includes songs in Italian, English and Spanish. Among the standouts are "Gira Con Me Questa Notte," "Con Te Partiro" and "A Time for Us (Un Giorno Per Noi)" from "Romeo & Juliet." Several songs were recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios with the London Symphony Orchestra. It was produced by Grammy winners Gregg Field (who has worked on projects for everyone from Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand to Quincy Jones and Arturo Sandoval) and Jorge Calandrelli. The late, legendary Phil Ramone helped mix, master and engineer the album as one of his final projects.  READ THE FULL Houston Chronicle ARTICLE

There was excitement and storytelling spanning the gamut of German Romanticism from Jonathan Biss Friday night at South Florida's Broward Center for the Performing Arts - Amaturo Theater. At 34, Biss is a well-established performer and writer, with a following from his online course on the Beethoven piano sonatas. A musical risk-taker, Biss underlined every note with substantial body language, always playing to the audience. Despite the hall's muting acoustic, the onslaught of youthful abandon in phrasing and liberty with tempos by by the American pianist freshened up what could have been a predictable program.  READ THE FULL South Florida Classical Review

Professional artists who visit Ohio University bring with them an excitement and energy felt not only by students but by faculty, too. These artists connect with students through master classes and workshops, influencing and broadening the students' work as they begin to create their own artistic voice. Faculty witness this surge of artistic energy in their students and also network with the artists. Now, thanks to a $1 million gift to OU by an anonymous donor, the southeast Ohio K-12 community will benefit as well. Crossover Media Artists - Project Trio worked with area schoolkids during their Ohio University visit in 2013. Thanks to an anonymous donor, the new Performing Arts in Education Fund will provide similar opportunities for OU and local K-12 students. The gift established the Performing Arts in Education Fund in the Division of Student Affairs. The fund supports intentional programming with visiting performing artists who will engage in a residency at Ohio University. These artists will work with students and faculty and also engage with Athens-based and regional K-12 students, said Andrew Holzaepfel, senior associate director for the Campus Involvement Center who also works with Ohio University's Performing Arts Series and who will oversee the visiting artists' residencies.  READ THE FULL WOUB: Athens OH ARTICLE

This month brings the 10th annual collaboration of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra and the El Paso Pro-Musica Chamber Music Festival. The Cypress String Quartet (Cecily Ward, violin; Tom Stone, violin; Ethan Filner, viola; and Jennifer Kloetzel, cello), will be the symphony's guest artists at EPSO's fourth concert of the season, and this weekend's concert, entitled "Winter Whirlwind," showcases the San Francisco-based quartet playing Sir Edward Elgar's "Introduction and Allegro for Strings, op. 47." When the piece premiered with the brand-new London Symphony Orchestra in 1905, Elgar's wife, Alice, a bit of a music critic in her own right, wrote that "many people think it the finest thing that he has written." The group wowed El Paso during the 2006 festival and is thrilled to be back in town this year. The group has just released Beethoven's Middle Quartets, Op. 59 Nos. 1, 2, and 3 (the "Razumovsky" Quartets); Op. 74 ("The Harp"); and Op. 95 (Quartetto serioso) via AVIE Records. The 3-CD set was recorded at Skywalker Sound by Mark Willsher and produced by Cecily Ward. READ THE FULL El Paso Inc. STORY     READ THE FULL

Flutist Robert Stallman has a special understanding of Mozart. His illuminating efforts as an arranger/interpreter are widely admired among Mozarteans such as Richard Goode and Robert Levin. Stallman's latest disc opens with the popular Concerto in C Major for Flute & Harp. It also includes Stallman's re-creation of Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos, K 448, as a Sinfonia Concertante for Two Flutes and Orchestra, and the closing work is a transcription of two movements from the Haffner Serenade. Mozart: Andante & Rondo in G major, K 250 from Robert Stallman's Cosi fan Flauti on Bogner's Café is the WFMT: Chicago - New Release of the Week. Featuring - Robert Stallman, flute; Czech Chamber Orchestra / Ondřej Kukal

Jack Gallagher continues his association with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta with Symphony No. 2, Ascendant, a robust, colorful work of dramatic contrasts and expansive architecture that seeks to express the aspirations and strivings of the human spirit. Quiet Reflections is a calm, serenely lyrical meditation which evokes a sense of longing for past tranquility. Gallagher's previous Naxos release with the LSO conducted by JoAnn Falletta was hailed as "fresh and exuberant" by Gramophone. The Finale of Gallagher's Symphony No 2, Ascendant on the Naxos label is the WFMT: Chicago - New Release of the Week

The first time Bill Frisell played a jazz tune on guitar in public was at a talent show during his junior year at East High School, in 1967. He wasn't even the featured performer; the school's band director, Vincent Tagliavore, asked him to learn Wes Montgomery's "Bumpin' on Sunset" to accompany some girls who were doing a dance routine to the song. Tagliavore thought it would be a lot cooler if they played live rather than having the girls dance to the record. And so began the career of one of the planet's most well-regarded jazz guitarists. Frisell hadn't even listened to much jazz before that performance. He grew up listening to surf music, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, "and then blues -- and by the time I got there, it was James Brown and the Temptations, all mixed together," he says. "This was before Jimi Hendrix and all that. So ['Bumpin' on Sunset'] was like an atomic explosion in my brain that led me, really, into the world of jazz." Frisell presents his Guitar in the Space Age show at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, January 21, East High School, 1600 City Park Esplanade, Denver