…A major downtown transit hub, Chicago’s Union Station occupies an archaic building that is poorly designed, often crowded, and notoriously associated with delayed commuter trains. Sections of it are literally falling apart.
In May 2025, cellist Lia Kohl set up in Union Station’s Great Hall with nine other musicians from Chicago’s improvised / creative music scene for a free, 43-minute rush-hour set.
The instrumentation included cellos, bass clarinets, sax, trombones, tuba, and violin. The performance functions as a piece of sound art that combines slow-moving chamber music with the ambient noise of the space. Alongside strings, horns and reeds, one can hear voices, travelers walking by, luggage carts, and…
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Late Brahms speaks in fragments, memories and subtle revelations. In these intimate piano works, every gesture carries the weight of a lifetime distilled into a few measures: songs without words, reflections that seem to emerge from silence and return to it. Here Sir 
…features two further recordings that complement the original album’s ultimate collection of Arvo Pärt’s music for solo piano.
Within the somewhat unusual confluence of synthesizers and a small orchestral ensemble, Canadian artist 
Musical Instrument Digital Interface (aka MIDI) has such a pervasive presence in the musical landscape that it’s easy to take it for granted. Yet, when it first appeared in the early 1980s, the standard felt miraculous. Back when technology was more meaningful, MIDI’s ability to bridge physical and digital domains meant that devices like synthesizers and keyboards were suddenly able to talk both to each other and to computer programs. The protocol has countless applications today, many of them purely software-based, but this particular facet remains its most fascinating, even serving as a core aesthetic principle for acts like Berlin’s 
Stirrings Still was Samuel Beckett’s last message in prose, completed in 1987, and first published the following year. More monologue than story, it comes from a narrator on the edge between life and what lies beyond, which might be a vast wheatfield seen in black-and-white, or might be a swirl of stumbling memories. Beckett cherished music, in particular the songs and string quartets of Franz Schubert. His writing is musical, in its meticulous phrasing, its use of repetition, and often its form. Stirrings Still is an example: a composition of interweavings and developments.
Sam Shepherd studied classical piano before he started making brainy dance music as 
The word invictus was with us long before Prince Harry founded his Invictus Games in 2014.
The Will of Tongues, the latest record by performer-composer 
When an artist breaks away from the path they know best, there are two expected directions they can take: either they’ll continue to make the same kinds of music they’ve always made, or they’ll sprint in the opposite direction. When the robots known as 
Yolanda Kondonassis’s dual role as both harpist and percussionist across this album’s centerpiece concerto represents the performance’s most distinctive interpretive challenge. Navigating between two fundamentally different instrumental identities within a single extended work demands not only technical facility but genuine musical adaptability. The harpist meets this challenge with evident command, moving between the harp’s sustained resonance and percussion’s rhythmic impact without suggesting interpretive inconsistency. Andrew Grams coordinates the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra around the soloist with consistent responsiveness, permitting the ensemble to contribute meaningful orchestral dialogue rather than mere accompaniment.
Anthony Hopkins, it turns out, has been composing music all his life. Now, at the age of 88, the Welsh-born Hollywood actor makes his Decca debut, securing the services of LA Philharmonic’s outgoing music director Gustavo Dudamel to bring his music to life.
John Williams’ place in the canon of film music, Hollywood history and American popular culture is well solidified. The 94-year-old composer just saw the release of Disclosure Day, his 30th soundtrack for director Steven Spielberg – a collaboration that’s yielded three Oscar-winning scores in 
When not leading the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra or fulfilling her duties as concertmaster of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (ISO), violinist Una Sveinbjarnardóttir (b. 1975) performs and records with artists such as Björk, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Sigur Rós, Ben Frost, and Víkingur Ólafsson. She’s also a founding member of 
This album presents Jakub Hrůša and the Bamberger Symphoniker in the complete cycle of 