An American Mosaic

‘Performance Today’ has selected performer and composer Jessie Montgomery as the 2025 Classical Woman of the Year. This annual award recognizes women who have made significant contributions to the classical music art form and have inspired our listeners. Find out more!

Today, we take you to the Kölner (Cologne) Philharmonie in Germany to hear Richard Wagner's powerful Faust Overture. Hear about the concert hall's distinctive history, where they custom-designed the 2,000 seats to optimize acoustics and absorb sound.

The pressure to achieve perfection can be overwhelming. So, what would it be like to embrace vulnerability and imperfection? For composer Derrick Skye, it's a profound release from fear and anxiety. In today’s episode, we’ll hear a quartet inspired by the idea of imperfection: Deliverance by Derrick Skye.

Around the world, November 11th is known as Remembrance Day or Armistice Day, and in the U.S., it is celebrated as Veterans Day. On this episode of Performance Today, we'll honor those who've served our country in uniform, and hear highlights from the United States Army Band "Pershing's Own," plus a performance of Wood Notes by Navy veteran William Grant Still.

When Claude Debussy composed music for the ballet "Jeux," he envisioned a game of tennis between two women and a young man. In tennis, "love" means nothing; in Debussy's music, love is everything. In this episode, we'll hear romance and seduction on the courts from a recent concert in Budapest.

Valerie Kahler is no stranger to PT; our longtime guest host and friend officially joins the team as full-time host on today's show. Join Valerie as she begins her musical adventures with Performance Today.

Today, we'll hear the powerful overture to the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, Omar, by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels. The opera tells the true story of Omar Ibn Said, a West African Islamic scholar who was enslaved in 1807. Giddens and Abels built the overture on the melody of Koromanti, one of the earliest documented songs composed by an enslaved person in the Americas. A big thanks goes out to Interlochen Presents and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for sharing this performance with us!

When Marin Alsop was a kid, her parents taught her she could achieve anything she set her heart to; no one was going to stop her. She's now the Music Director of the National Orchestral Institute and Festival and guest conducts orchestras worldwide. On today's program, we'll hear Marin Alsop make her conducting debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at a concert in Germany.

In 2016, pianist and composer Gabriela Montero wrote a concerto reflecting how people perceive Latin America. She says it's not an overtly political piece, but it does express the light and dark sides of the subject. Today, we'll hear Gabriela Montero play her “Latin Concerto” at a recent concert in Gstaad, Switzerland.

For composer Kevin Puts, the key of C major is a sonic representation of "home." It's familiar and comforting. In 2019, Puts wrote a string quartet that begins with that familiar key, but goes on to what Puts calls "the search for new and unfamiliar harmonic terrain." He wanted the music to explore the sonic possibilities, but then return to his musical idea of home. Puts knew that, however he got there, the feeling of home would be changed by the journey. Join us today to hear the Miro Quartet play Home by Kevin Puts.