Performance Today®

Around the world, November 11th is Remembrance Day or Armistice Day, and here in the U.S., we celebrate it as Veterans Day. On this episode of Performance Today, we'll honor those who've served our country in uniform.

American composer John Adams wrote a piece for clarinetist Michael Collins: "Gnarly Buttons." That unusual title is a half joking reference to how difficult it is to play the clarinet, which has all those difficult keys on it, those... gnarly buttons. On today's show, hear Michael Collins and members of the Minnesota Orchestra play this fun, yet emotional piece of music.

Recently, Elizabeth Weinfield and her friends in the early music group Sonnambula stumbled across music by a long-forgotten composer. The works were written in the mid 1600s by a Flemish woman named Leonora Duarte. On this episode of Performance Today, hear Sonnambula perform 6 of Leonora Duarte's short Sinfonias.

When Arturo Marquez was a teenager in Mexico in the 1960s, he played in a Mariachi band. He went to school and became a composer of orchestral music, but he's still especially fond of a dance from the city of Veracruz, Mexico. On today's episode of Performance Today, hear the Danzon No. 2 by Arturo Marquez, from a concert at the Aspen Music Festival.

Composer Clarice Assad was born and raised in Brazil, but has spent the last few decades in the United States. When she's asked where home is, she says "The Americas." On this episode of Performance Today, hear Assad's "Without Borders," performed by the Chicago Sinfonietta.

Love and Death... it's all right there in the title: The Liebestod. On this episode of Performance Today, take a seat at the home of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to hear them perform the Prelude and Liebestod, from Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner.

American composer John Adams wrote a piece for clarinetist Michael Collins: "Gnarly Buttons." That unusual title is a half joking reference to how difficult it is to play the clarinet, which has all those difficult keys on it, those... gnarly buttons. On today's show, hear Michael Collins and members of the Minnesota Orchestra play this fun, yet emotional piece of music.

Benjamin Beilman plays a special violin, a Stradivarius, hand-crafted in 1709. He has the violin on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation, so eventually he'll have to give the violin back. On this weekend's show, Benjamin Beilman describes what it feels like to know that their time together is temporary; then hear him play a sonata by Eugene Ysaye, from a concert at the Music@Menlo Festival.

Gabriel Campos Zamora grew up with parents who played jazz, and now he is the principal clarinetist for the Minnesota Orchestra. Gabriel Campos Zamora gets the best of both worlds when he busts out some boogie-woogie with an orchestra backing him up; a toe-tapping Concerto by Artie Shaw, on this episode of Performance Today.