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In the words of Irish-American singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan, “performing alone is a very solitary experience. Aoife makes the claim that “when you’re in a band and something amazing happens on stage, you look at each other, ‘Yeah! We’re so locked in.’ Or if something goes wrong, you can look at each other and shrug and…

Many pianists have played all 32 Beethoven sonatas over the course of their career, and some have played all of them over the course of a season in a concert hall. But almost no one has ever attempted to play all 32 in one day. In this episode, we listen to excerpts from Stewart Goodyear’s…

Leyla McCalla is an American musician of Haitian descent, who first became known for her work with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Since leaving that group in 2012, she has been working to develop her own personal approach to music that encompasses her Haitian roots, American folk, Louisiana roots and gospel, along with jazz and classical…

German Lopez is an esteemed timple player from the Canary Islands, an archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa that belongs to the nation of Spain. In this episode, we listen to German Lopez’s SMF debut in 2017 alongside his musical partner, guitarist Antonio Toledo.

Many pianists have played all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas over their career, and some have even played all of them over the course of a season in a concert hall, but almost nobody has ever attempted to play all 32 of them in one day. Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear, in a program he calls Sonatathon,…

By the early 1880s, Johann Hummel’s father recognized that he had a child prodigy who had outstripped his own ability to teach him, so he jumped at the chance to move his family to Vienna where Mozart was then at his peak. When Mozart learned of this extraordinary young man, he invited him to his…

Though he rejects the label “child prodigy,” Polish-Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki started playing at age 5 and made his orchestral debut at age 9. His approach to music is a refreshing combination of dedication, skill and enthusiasm. In this episode, we listen to Jan Lisiecki’s Savannah debut from the 2017 Savannah Music Festival, recorded live…

Since 2004, Daniel Hope has been Associate Artistic Director of the Savannah Music Festival. During this time, his meteoric rise in the world of classical music has resulted from his all-out passion for connecting his music to audiences. He has also helped create original chamber music programs built around visiting artists from North America and…

Foghorn Stringband made their Savannah Music Festival debut in 2017 on a double-bill with the Dom Flemons Trio. With eight albums, thousands of shows, fifteen years of touring under their belts and an entirely new generation of roots musicians following their lead, Foghorn is comprised of Caleb Klauder (mandolin, vocals), Sammy Lind (fiddle, vocals), Reeb…

Richard Thompson is constantly ranked among rock n’ roll’s greatest guitarists and finest songwriters by the music press and fellow musicians. His return to the Savannah Music Festival in 2017 spotlighted his abilities as a solo performer, including material from his earliest days with Fairport Convention through his latest solo album.

Mandolinist Mike Marshall and bassist Edgar Meyer first began playing together in the early 1980s, and their genre blending musical projects over the years have been nothing short of remarkable. In this episode, we hear their 2017 Savannah Music Festival performance at the Lucas Theatre for the Arts, where they were joined by Edgar’s son…

Singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Jarosz continues to build a career that includes an exceptional catalog of original songs, an impressive array of performing projects, and most recently a flurry of commendations including two Grammy Awards. In this episode, we listen to Sarah Jarosz’ 2017 return to the Savannah Music Festival, where she shared a…

In a memorable Library of Congress interview with folklorist Alan Lomax, Jelly Roll Morton described the “Spanish Tinge” as tresillo and habanera rhythms of Afro-Cuban music that were an essential ingredient to jazz music. In this episode, we listen to a 2017 concert exploring that phenomenon with three acclaimed jazz pianists, Marcus Roberts, Danilo Perez…

The jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk was born in Rocky Mount North Carolina in 1917 and is the second most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington. During SMF 2017, we focused on two of jazz music’s most pivotal figures born 100 years ago: Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. In this episode, we listen to Rodney…

Guitarists Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge craft songs that sound familiar but are never easily classified. Percolating with tinges of bluegrass and folk, insinuations of jazz and pop, hints of classical and avant-garde composition, they rarely settle into any one category. Rather, their music dances around the territory between genres, never announcing its innovations and…

Joel Savoy, the son of Cajun musician/accordion builder Marc and musician/historian Ann Savoy, has been at the forefront of the Louisiana music revival of the past two decades. He is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, producer and record label (Valcour) founder who has won the Cajun French Music Association’s “Fiddler of the Year” Award twice, and was…

The ultimate goal of every jazz musician is to achieve his or her personal sound, an unmistakable voice whereby they blend expression, emotion and technique through mastery of their instrument. Tenor saxophonist Stephen Riley has one of the most distinctive voices in modern jazz, and this episode features his 2016 appearance leading a quartet backed…

As an instrumentalist of prodigious technique, a session musician and producer, a selfless and devoted sideman, a contemporary master of 1920s and ’30s jazz styles and an ardent student of American folk traditions, Matt Munisteri’s journey through 20th century American music yields a vision that feels intrinsically whole. This 2016 SMF performance by Munisteri features…

Over four decades of performance and a catalog of award-winning recordings, Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars have done more than any other group to establish sacred vocal music of the Renaissance as one of the great repertoires of western Classical music. Formed in 1973, their goal was to bring Renaissance works to a wider…

The history of the mandolin goes back to 17th and 18th century Italy, when the instrument evolved from the lute family. Over time, the mandolin developed into primarily three types: the Neopolitan or round-backed mandolin, the carved top mandolin and the flat-backed mandolin. Whether it is used in western classical music, Brazilian music, bluegrass and…

He calls it a machine, but it’s actually a band — a quintet to be precise, rooted in folk, country, blues and rock ‘n’ roll. Dave Rawlings’ longtime musical partner is Gillian Welch, and she joins him along with Willie Watson, Brittany Haas and Paul Kowert on this Savannah debut performance. This is part two…

Though he’s a guitarist, producer and singer, Dave Rawlings is probably best known as the longtime musical partner of singer-songwriter Gillian Welch. Together they have created an original body of work and an Americana roots sound whose beauty and brilliance is unique even ina city as musical as Nashville. In this episode, we listen to…

While generally acknowledged as one of the finest jazz drummers in the world, Brian Blade is also a singer-songwriter, a session man for Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, and the son of a singing preacher man from Louisiana. In this episode, we listen to his signature group, Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band, in their…

When you’re born into a renowned musical family, there’s generally a better chance of you understanding music not simply as a job, but as a way of life. Such was the case for Catherine Russell, whose father Luis Russell was Louis Armstrong’s long-time musical director. Her mother was Carline Ray, a singer with degrees from…

The Persian Empire was any of a series of imperial dynasties centered in Persia, an area that is now modern-day Iran. One of the most famous instruments in traditional Persian music is the kamancheh, a four-stringed, upright fiddle. Kayhan Kalhor is a master of the kamancheh, and in this episode, we listen to his SMF…

In this episode, we listen to part two of a two-part show from SMF 2016 with the Time Jumpers featuring Vince Gill.

While American country music originated in the late 1920s in the southern United States, an important subgenre of the style was called western swing. As dance music, often with an uptempo beat, western swing attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma and California during the 1930s and 40s, until a federal…

The Brazilian born pianist Arnaldo Cohen, now living in the U.S., has long had a reputation for astonishing his audiences with the musical authority and blistering virtuosity of his performances. His grateful and unaffected platform manner belies playing of white-hot intensity, intellectual probity and glittering bravura technique bordering on sheer wizardry. In this episode, we…

Every once in a while, a performer seems to transcend the experience of giving a recital for an audience into something vastly fulfilling for themselves. When it happens, the result is powerful and revelatory, and it usually leaves the audience hungry for more. In the 40+ years that Murray Perahia has been performing on the…

The word “concerto” is derived from the Italian concertare, which means “to reach an agreement.” Concertos have been written for all the instruments of the orchestra, but the vast majority are written for violin cello or piano, as these three instruments feature a wide dynamic and expressive range. In this episode, we feature several masterpieces…