When composer/musician/producer Quincy Jones joined us on November 14’s Soundcheck, he said the next conversation he had with the newly elected president, Barack Obama, would be to plead for a Secretary of the Arts. (There are no six degrees of separation with Quincy Jones – he knows everybody.) It ...

The Beatles and the Stones were always about more than the music. Maybe that’s not how they intended it, but that’s how society made it. Parents – including my own – in the 60s and 70s may have objected to the music on purely aesthetic grounds, but I suspect it ...

Brighton Port Authority – I Think We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat (Southern Fried Records)

Norman Cook is counting on you NOT recognizing his name. Otherwise, the whole crazy story of his band, the Brighton Port Authority, falls ...

Times are tough. But you know what? Times are always tough for someone. If we start using that as an excuse to stop supporting the arts, if we allow orchestras, opera houses, jazz clubs, dance programs and the like to fold up their tents, we pay for that down the ...

Anna Bulbrook on electric viola and Mikel Jollett on keyboard
Slideshow: The Airborne Toxic Event at WNYC

Indie rockers the Airborne Toxic Event hail from Los Angeles and take their name from the Don DeLillo ...

I don’t play pool a lot; but occasionally I’ll find myself in a bar with a pool table and might attempt a game or two. A few years ago, a friend and I went to the local brewpub in Park ...

Motown and Stax. The two great labels of American soul and R&B. There is really no good way to prove that one label was better than the other – but that won’t stop us from asking the question. After all, this is the fun part of being a fan. Sports ...

In Mozart’s day, his place at the banquet table was between the valet and the cook – because while Mozart may have been a composer of singular genius, he was also essentially a servant, part of the household staff of the Archbishop of Salzburg. Author Tim Blanning, in his book ...

This weekend, we have dueling world music festivals happening here in NYC. The Mondo Mundo event at the Hiro Ballroom on Saturday and SOBs on Monday; and the GlobalFest, which takes place on three different stages at Webster Hall on Sunday. (And which we’re webcasting ...

Slideshow: Calypso Rose at WNYC

Calypso superstar McArtha Lewis, better known as Calypso Rose, composed her first calypso after witnessing a man stealing the glasses off of a woman’s face in Trinidad, warning people from her native country ...

Today we ask a couple of our critic-friends what they’re looking forward to in 2009 in the worlds of pop, rock, and classical music. This might just be the best time of the year, because looking forward to something is often better than actually getting it. This can be true ...

There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about the state of the music industry – much of it, I should say, coming from inside the music industry. But even casual observers have to worry – if only to wonder whether their favorite musicians will have to ...

'DG Concerts - Shostakovich & Mosolov: In the Shadow of Stalin,'
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)

Shostakovich’s 1930 opera 'The Nose' is based on Gogol's short story of a civil servant whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own. As the composer ...

If you have kids, you know why the idea of kids music makes otherwise reasonable people start screaming like lunatics. Whether your kid listens to Barney, Raffi, or Mozart, you will end up listening to it too - over ...

The new year opens with some pretty dour economic news, and as often happens, the arts become something of a canary in the coal mine. When times are tough, it seems to affect arts organizations early, and disproportionately. Especially smaller organizations. Here in NY, I think immediately of the New ...

The band Of Montreal recently visited Soundcheck to play live and to talk about their latest album, "Skeletal Lamping." (Check out the full segment here.) After the broadcast, frontman Kevin Barnes and guitarist Brian Poole talked about their favorite on-stage costumes -- and Kevin revealed a secret about shaving ...

I think we were all surprised yesterday at the strong reactions provoked by our segment on Auto-Tune, the little software program that corrects pitch but which, when used as a “special effect,” produces that weird, warbling, almost robotic sound ...

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Bach’s 'The Art of Fugue' (Deutsche Grammophon)

The iconic image of a classical pianist in 2008 might have been that of Lang Lang, performing center stage, in the lavish opening ceremonies to the Beijing Olympics. Meanwhile, ...

During our annual Critics Week last week, at least two or three of our guests alluded to Auto-Tune, with one, Jody Rosen of Slate.com, referring to 2008 as The Year of Auto-Tune. You may not know what Auto-Tune is, but you have heard it. A lot. Auto-Tune is essentially a ...