Search results for

Chopin had the courage to believe that the expression contained in a three-minute Mazurka for solo piano could be as powerful as the expression in an entire four-hour Wagner opera. Hear pianist and composer Rob Kapilow, and radio host Fred Child, explain what makes Chopin great.

Los Angeles-based singer Maia Sharp may be on her fourth album, Echo, but she's mostly made her living writing songs for other performers, including Cher, Dixie Chicks and Bonnie Raitt. After a few brushes with success, this time around, Sharp feels like she's ready to break through.

Once upon a time, an NPR Music series called JazzSet With Branford Marsalis visited clubs, concerts and festivals across the country and around the world. Today, our founding host runs his own record label, and JazzSet visits the Marsalis Music Stage at Newport, where Chilean-born Claudia Acuna sets political folk songs to the sounds of jazz.

La Roux is a British pop duo — 21-year-old singer Elly Jackson and synth player-producer Ben Langmaid — with a style that blends passionate vocals with strict mechanical beats. The pair's self-titled debut album went No. 1 in England and Europe this year, and now it's out stateside. Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews.

The daughter of French pop artist Serge Gainsbourg and actress Jane Birkin has found success as an actress, as well as a singer and songwriter. Her latest record, IRM, finds her enlisting Beck.

At age 4, Bruno Mars was delighting crowds with his "Little Elvis" impersonation. His success as an adult didn't come as quickly, but fame came calling after he produced several big hits.

Pianist Joan Stiles is known for her brilliant playing, painted by a deep understanding of the roots of jazz. As a full-time educator, Stiles has been presenting the music of Mary Lou Williams for the past decade. She also knows how to swing on a Monk tune or two.

The jazz trumpeter chats about and performs songs from his album Yesterday You Said Tomorrow. He tells guest host Audie Cornish about how he developed his signature breathy sound, and his education in jazz which came from his family, formal schooling, and the clubs in his hometown of New Orleans.

Syrians seem unimpressed with this year's Nobel Peace laureate — the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the international chemical weapons watchdog that is currently working in Syria to catalogue and destroy the Syrian army's stockpiles of poison gas. In the words of one activist in Damascus, reaction "ranges from pure anger to disillusion to sarcasm to black comedy."

The singer and guitarist fields comments from listeners about her music and talks about the ways her songs can be interpreted.