The most recent opera by preeminent American composer John Adams—a glorious adaptation of Shakespeare’s immortal drama—has its Met premiere. Following her debut in the company premiere of Adams’s El Niño in 2024, soprano Julia Bullock stars as the irresistible Cleopatra, one of theater’s most complex and captivating characters, opposite bass-baritone Gerald Finley as the conflicted Antony. Adams himself takes the …

Season Premiere: Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, soloist Pekka Kuusisto, and composer/developer Jesper Nordin’s cutting-edge electronics come together in Nordin’s radical reinvention of the violin concerto, Convergence. In Naïve and Sentimental Music, dedicated to Salonen, John Adams celebrates a similar creative impulse: spontaneity, the spirit of free play.

Sunday, February 2, 2025, is the year’s biggest night for music. Peruse the classical, jazz, contemporary, folk, screen, and stage nominees, and see the winners as they’re announced!

Curated celebratory classical music, and the exact second to press play so the music crescendos with the changing of the New Year.

Dive in to the classical, jazz, contemporary, folk, screen, and stage nominees!

Timo Andres is a favorite young composer of John Adams, who conducts the world premiere of his concerto Made of Tunes written for pianist Aaron Diehl.

WFMT is bringing you the fire with a curated playlist of pyrotechnic music.

A program for Memorial Day including Gerald Finzi’s Farewell to Arms and Benjamin Britten’s Ballad of Heroes.

Eminent American composer John Adams returns to the Met after a decade-long hiatus for the company premiere of his acclaimed opera-oratorio, an extraordinarily dramatic retelling of the Nativity.

Four contemporary operas have their Met premieres.

Wanderers, farewells, and sightseeing; people are always on the go. This week, Bill calls up, “A Little Traveling Music, Please” from the pens of Handel, Smetana, Duke Ellington, and more. Reflections from such travels infuse themselves into their works, as we will discover throughout the week. We will hear selections from Beethoven’s Les Adieux, Schubert’s Die Schöne Mullerin, and Haydn’s …

Season Premiere: Music director Gustavo Dudamel leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program showcasing the orchestra’s principal flutist, Denis Bouriakov, and principal harpist Emmanuel Ceysson.

From Paris Opera, hear a star-studded cast that includes Thomas Hampson as Richard Nixon and Renée Fleming as Pat Nixon, with John Matthew Myers as Chairman Mao.

Vikingur Ólafsson plays John Adams’ Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? under the baton of music director Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Alan Gilbert conducts this performance from 2015, which features a John Adams world premiere.

The program, recorded in the newly renovated Wu Tsai Theater at David Geffen Hall, opens with the world premiere of Oyá by Marcos Balter, featuring Levy Lorenzo as the electronics soloist.

Edo de Waart opens this program with John Adams’ The Chairman Dances, followed by Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D featuring Leila Josefowicz and Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony.

Steve Jobs gets the operatic treatment with Mason Bates’ Grammy-winning The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. We spoke with the composer, librettist Mark Campbell, as well as baritone Edward Parks, who created the role of Jobs.

WFMT brings you a “musical getaway,” whether you’re enjoying the comfort of your cushiest armchair or exploring somewhere new!

The John Adams opera Nixon in China will have eight performances at the Bastille in March and April.

John Adams’ version of Antony and Cleopatra will have its world premiere on the opening weekend of the San Francisco Opera’s 100th season.

This LGBTQ Pride Month, WFMT honors the numerous LGBTQ artists and composers who have changed classical music for the better.

The 2010s were a tumultuous decade, replete with astounding artistic highlights, superlative new voices, and watershed moments of reckoning. WFMT hosts and staff reflect on what the past decade brought for classical music, and what the new decade may have in store.

On February 10, some of the biggest names in the music industry convened at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards at Staples Center in Los Angeles. R&B and soul singer Alicia Keys hosted the ceremony, as winners were announced in 30 fields and 84 categories. Here are the nominees and winners for the classical music categories.

It will mark Muti’s tenth-anniversary season as music director as well as the 250th birthday of Beethoven. Muti conducts all of Beethoven’s symphonies over the course of the season, culminating in the triumphant Symphony No. 9 in June 2020.