They are sure signs of Spoleto in downtown Charleston; instrument toting musicians and scorching heat. Among the jostling violin cases, is Shannon Fitzhenry. She’s back for her second year with the annual Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, one of 92 musicians chosen to play. “...

Scribbling notes on a dry erase board just won't do. So David Virelles plays them instead, on a piano. The Cuban composer and pianist is teaching a masters class at the Charleston Jazz Academy in North Charleston, as part of the Spoleto arts festival's community outreach...

Paul Wiancko started playing cello at age five. By age eight, he had composed his first piece of music. “If you can call it a piece,” Wiancko says. “I think it was maybe a thirty-two measure little tune, mostly in C major, mostly consisting of a couple of triads. And I...

For many composers, getting started on a symphony can be a serious challenge. Johannes Brahms famously spent some twenty years completing his first such work. But for South Carolina composer Meira Warshauer, inspiration was a bit easier in coming. She found it in the world...

For many years, jazz great Marian McPartland welcomed some of the biggest names in - and out of - jazz to her NPR program, Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz . March 20, on the 101st anniversary of her birth, an evening of McPartland's music inaugurated a new music series, Live...

Traditionally, a night at the symphony has entailed dressing up. For performers and audience members alike, the sight of a sharply-dressed crowd is nearly as much of a given as the sound of orchestral music. But the move toward a more casual concert experience is becoming a...

Ask Wynton Marsalis to name his favorite holiday song and he might tell you, “The Christmas Song” by Mel Torme. Then he’ll likely explain it’s personal. When Marsalis first moved to New York, he played in a show with Torme. He was 18 years-old. “The contractor thought I was...

For violinist Benjamin Beilman, the music of Johannes Brahms has timeless appeal. Striking what he considers a “perfect balance” between the personal and the objective, works like the German Romantic composer’s Violin Concerto in D major, op. 77, still have the power to...

“Whatever you want to happen in your life, help make it happen for somebody else…and it will happen for you.” Columbia native, Kevin Felder, started writing songs as a middle-schooler. Today, his music can be heard internationally. Through the ministry of Christian rap, Big...

Charleston’s Fud Livingston, 'Jazz Age' arranger, composer, and musician, made memorable music. (Originally broadcast 05/18/18) - Joseph Anthony “Fud” Livingston, born in Charleston, SC, in 1906, was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, arranger, and composer who...

Pianist Gene Harris (1933 – 2000) was an integral part of the well-known group The Three Sounds trio, with bassist Andy Simpkins and drummer Bill Dowdy. After a brief hiatus in the 1970s, he teamed up with bassist Ray Brown to form a new group and also made his way as a...

August 21 will bring the first concert in five years to Columbia’s Williams-Brice Stadium when Beyoncé and Jay-Z make a stop on their On the Run II Tour . For Columbia local and Beyoncé superfan Merrell Johnson, this is an especially big event. “I’ve been a fan of hers...

This past spring, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra performed a concert that was accompanied by a very special, unique, and OLD violin. In fact, this violin is over 300 years old and it one of the world's most celebrated instruments. South Carolina Public Radio’s Bradley...

Working with jazz legends like John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, and numerous others has given double bassist Reggie Workman more than a little perspective on music-making. On Monday, June 4th, the eighty-year-old exponent of hard bop and avant-garde jazz shared...

John Kennedy talks with Jeanette Guinn about the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, and about the U.S. Pemiere of the opera, Tree of Codes . Australian composer Liza Lim dissolves boundaries to create holes in the world—perforations in which audience members might encounter...