Performance Today®

Despite the need to stay physically apart these days, music has the power to unite us, to make us feel connected to our fellow humans. On Today's show, join us for a performance featuring Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir, a choir of more than 17,000 singers. Plus, Bruce Adolphe has this week's Piano Puzzler.

Composer Jennifer Higdon associates color with sounds, similar to the way many people associate taste and feelings with color. On today's show, hear the Lincoln Trio play Higdon's musical interpretation of a color - pale yellow.

Imagine that you're falling in slow motion, always moving down, but never coming to rest. That feather-floating feeling is behind two related pieces by David Lang. On today's show, feed your curious spirit, let your imagination run free with a musical discovery: "Gravity" and "After Gravity" by David Lang.

Despite the need to stay physically apart these days, music has the power to unite us, to make us feel connected to our fellow humans. On Today's show, join us for a performance featuring Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir, a choir of more than 17,000 singers.

In 1932, George Gershwin enjoyed a vacation in Havana, Cuba. He came home with a set of bongos, a set of maracas, and inspiration for a new composition. On this episode of Performance Today we'll hear Gershwin's Cuban Overture, his souvenir from two weeks in Cuba.

Edward Elgar found it almost impossible to compose during the First World War. He said, "I cannot do any real work with this awful shadow hanging over us." But in 1918, he began writing a lament for a lost world. On today's show, hear Elgar's lament, his Cello Concerto in E Minor, from a concert in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Our planet is teeming with life, and the rainforests are the lungs of the earth. Composer Meira Warshauer was moved by that image and the threats our natural world faces when she wrote her first symphony. It's a musical prayer for healing, for our home. On today's show, hear Warshauer's Symphony No. 1 "Living Breathing Earth", from a performance by the Western Piedmont Symphony in Hickory, NC.

As a teacher, she's inspired hundreds of students. She's a talented flutist, a founder of groundbreaking ensembles, and she's a composer with a unique personal voice that speaks to all of us. On today's show, we celebrate Valerie Coleman, our PT Classical Woman of the Year.

Do you know any couples who are always arguing and disagreeing, but it's also clear that they truly love each other? On today's show, hear music inspired by a couple just like that, from Shakespeare: The Piano Concerto No. 2 by Edward McDowell, with Andre Watts at the piano with the Nashville Symphony.