Our biggest orchestras are finally playing more music by women. What took so long?
As the new concert season gets underway, composers and orchestra administrators say they are feeling a shift in whose music gets heard.
Music Features
Love Songs of a Dirtbag
On Being Funny In A Foreign Language, the new album by his band The 1975, Matty Healy makes romantic music for cynical outsiders who insist they're ready to give love a try.
Celebrating the 150th birthday of British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams
Collecting traditional tunes from all over the British Isles, Vaughan Williams famously produced gently modal folksong fantasies evoking England's "green and pleasant land."
What is viral jazz?
Hard to define, for one thing. But in our disorienting digital age, these image-savvy, genre-fluid, proficient yet irreverent artists can seem like the only ones who've gleefully cracked the code.
Encore: Eric Gales on reclaiming his place as a blues guitar icon
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly spoke with guitarist and singer Eric Gales about reclaiming a career stalled by drug addiction and prison time.
On '¡Ay!', the tropical music of Lucrecia Dalt's childhood becomes avant-garde sci-fi
On her surreal, sci-fi and decidedly romantic new album ¡Ay!, the Colombian, Berlin-based electronic artist crafts an alien narrative drawing inspiration from the genres of her youth.
For Chileans blinded in police violence, making music has become one path to healing
All members of Hacía la Victoria ("Onward to Victory") sustained eye injuries during clashes with police in anti-government protests in 2019. Their lyrics focus on police brutality and their own pain.
Personifying a country ideal, Loretta Lynn tackled sexism through a complicated lens
Rather than extol Lynn in ways she rejected, we should appreciate the agency with which she so impressively crafted her identity in country music.
Revisiting San Juan Hill, the neighborhood destroyed to make way for Lincoln Center
In New York City, the area dominated by Lincoln Center was formerly home to Black and Puerto Rican communities. Etienne Charles' new musical work addresses that difficult past.
Stripped to the bones: Why a new NYC concert hall sounds so much better
The new David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center, home of the New York Philharmonic, opens this week. And while the outside is the same, everything inside has changed.