Traditional Jazz has never been associated with Europe. Miles, Dizzy and Charlie Parker stand for the great era in Jazz, but who knows Miroslav Vitous, Pierre Michelot, Krzysztof Komeda, Palle Mikkelborg, Tomasz Stanko, or René Urtreger? „Play Your…

The best way to get through the streets of the metropolis of Mexico City is with one of the famous green Volkswagen Beetle Taxis. In this city of 18 million people, Tenor Rolando Villazón was born. With a look somewhere between latin lover and Mr…

The Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler is arguably the best known Mahler symphony. The musical canvas and emotional scope of the work are huge. Herbert von Karajan said once that when you hear Mahler's Fifth, “you forget that time has passed. A great…

Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 in C minor is the last Symphony the composer completed. When Bruckner sent it in 1897 to Hermann Levi, the conductor who had lead his 7th to great success, he did not understand this very different work at all and…

Testing Mozart is a 60 minute film about the "Mozart Effect", the power of Mozart's music to fight disease and increase the mental ability of its listeners. It is common knowledge that cows give more milk and tomatoes grow bigger when played Mozart…

In March of 2004, the Royal Opera Covent Garden in London cancelled its contract with Deborah Voigt. The official reason given by the casting director: too fat. The opera world was outraged. Since when can't opera singers be overweight? Since Callas…

Jazz that gets under your skin – and that's been captured for eternity. That's the quintessence of this virtually private gig held by jazz trumpeter and singer Till Brönner and his top-caliber musician friends Bruno Müller (guitar), Roberto Di Gioia…

No composer before Mahler had ever devoted himself exclusively to two genres so apparently incompatible as the intimate lied and the grandiose symphony. Thus it is fascinating in “Das Lied von der Erde” to see him combining, at this late stage of his…

One of the world's finest and most-respected conductors, seventy-year-old Claudio Abbado is legendary in stature, having held the post of musical director with La Scala in Milan from 1968 to 1986, with the Vienna Opera from 1986 to 1991, and the…

Three generations of listeners have been turned on to the music of mystic singer/ songwriter Terry Callier. During the 1960s, concerts at the "Bitter End" New York, made him a leading figure in the early folk boom. In the 1970s, recordings for Chess…