Click on Classical: Music in the schools…and in the stacks

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This holiday week, I'm joining John Birge on Tuesday (instead of Monday) morning at 9:15 to talk about a few stories that have recently been published on our website. Here are the stories we'll be talking about today.

This week we published two articles about music education in Minnesota. David Lindquist profiled the Mirandola Ensemble, who were just named among Classical MPR's Class Notes artists for the coming school year. Click here to read why the group's Scott Sandersfeld considers kids the "ideal audience" for their Renaissance choral music. Also this week, Sheila Regan wrote about El Sistema Minnesota, the local arm of the global music education organization that originated in Venezuela. Read her post to learn how inner-city kids in Minneapolis are learning to love — and play — classical music from a very young age.

But hey, school's out! Heading to the beach this summer and packing some books? Emily Michael, a singer and writer, suggests some very readable nonfiction books for people who love classical music. Emily's especially interested in music and the brain, and she recommends books that get at the question of whether music is "hardwired" into our minds or whether it's, as one scientist argues, "auditory cheesecake" that's totally peripheral to neural functioning.