Dog image: SixtyWeb, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons This cute Labrador may be the biggest Mendelssohn fan you’ve seen. A dog joined the Vienna Chamber Orchestra during a recent performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 at the 31st International İzmir Festival in İzmir, Turkey. This outdoor annual festival brings live concerts to the historic stage of the Grand Theater of Ephesus, …

Can you tell the difference between Latin American foods and instruments? Take this quiz and find out.

Judy Garland introduced “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz, and she sang it for the rest of her life. Operatic soprano Renata Scotto used it as her signature encore at solo recitals. And more recently, and very memorably, Ariana Grande sang it to end One Love Manchester, her benefit for the victims of terrorism in the British …

Vincenzo Bellini’s opera Norma is so beautiful, it has inspired a dish: pasta alla Norma. When conductor and cook Riccardo Frizza led performances of “Norma” in Chicago, he shared his recipe.

Though the music of your favorite composers might make you smile, chances are, the composers themselves aren’t smiling in their portraits. Until now…

Composer Robert Schumann loved Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier so much that he said it should be every musician’s “daily bread.” But perhaps you’ve never thought it could make the perfect bubble-blowing soundtrack, too. The Well-Tempered Clavier is composed of two volumes of keyboard music. Each contains 24 pairs of preludes and fugues, one for each of the major and minor keys. …

WFMT announcer Robbie Ellis has shared his talents as a comedian and composer as the host of WFMT’s Cabaret series. During the most recent WFMT Cabaret, Ellis revealed his favorite (albeit unconventional) place to pick up a date: the book club. His song, “Book Club,” suggests a few strategies for attracting and impressing a companion who is literarily inclined. Watch …

Many musicians have performed the internationally beloved Italian song “‘O Sole Mio.” One songbird, a parrot in fact, performs the Neapolitan tune as a duet with the great Luciano Pavarotti. Composer Eduardo di Capua and lyricist Giovanni Capurro published their composition “‘O Sole Mio” in 1898. Since, it has been recorded by many artists including Andrea Bocelli and Elvis Presley. …

May is the perfect time to hear the “merry lads” of the Schola Cantorum of the London Oratory School sing outdoors.

And she doesn’t sound as fowl as you might think, either.

You don’t need an expensive piano sitting in your living room to impress your friends and family when they come to visit. Instead, wow them with a keyboard you made yourself. Stian Eikeland, a “developer, hacker, techno-foodie, diver, hobby-photographer” from Bergen, Norway, found a way to turn bananas into a fully functioning touch-sensor keyboard. The banana keyboard’s hardware consists of …

What’s more metal than Bach’s driving bass line, chromatic suspensions, and florid inner voices?

Everybody loves a good fugue, but you’ve never heard a fugue like this before. This “Fugue on Pi” was uploaded by YouTuber Gregory Ristow on March 14, 2014. March 14th is, of course, Pi Day, since the date corresponds to the first several digits of pi. Pi is an infinite, irrational number that’s defined by the ratio of a circle’s …

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons are some of the most frequently performed and instantly recognizable classical works today. The four concertos – Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter – were first published in 1725 in a larger collection of concertos called The Contest Between Harmony and Invention.

Is there anything Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter cannot do? YouTuber unconservatory has proved that the choreography to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” looks good even set to Shostakovich. In the video below, you can see her dance to the syncopated rhythms of the scherzo from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10.   This isn’t the only time someone has done a classical mash-up with Beyoncé’s …

Playing percussion is a lot harder than you might think. Unlike say, a violinist, who is responsible for playing one instrument, a percussionist must play dozens, if not hundreds, of different instruments.

Morgan and Louie get in costume in their dressing room during rehearsals for Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute W.C. Fields, who once said, “Never work with children or animals,” has clearly never met Morgan and Louie, the friendly canine stars of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new production of The Magic Flute. Director Neil Armfield has set the …

You’ve likely heard the song “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen at least once since it was released in 2013. Not only did “Let It Go” win Best Original Song at the 2014 Academy Awards and Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 2015 Grammy Awards, it’s also been recorded in dozens of languages from Cantonese to Croatian. Even …

Two of the most famous songs about the Windy City have been recorded by Frank Sinatra: “Chicago” and “My Kind of Town.” WFMT host Robbie Ellis has composed his own Chicago song, “A Shot of Malört,” that he shared during the station’s first Classical Cabaret, hosted at the Uptown Underground nightclub and broadcast live. For those who aren’t familiar, Jeppson’s …

Memorable performances by orchestras at recent sporting events.

The  latest collaboration between Lyric Opera of Chicago and Second City is LONGER! LOUDER! WAGNER!, which runs through Sunday, October 30 at the Civic Opera House. Actor Tim Ryder, who appeared in The Second City Guide to the Opera  (also in collaboration with Lyric), said: “This show tells two stories in parallel: the story of Richard Wagner as he creates the Ring …

In addition to an influential composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff was a fine conductor and magnificent pianist who enjoyed playing music by Liszt, Schubert, and Chopin.

The Broadway star — who got her start in opera — shared her operatic talents on a recent episode of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live,’ performing her own unique rendition of the theme song to ‘Game of Thrones.’

If you’re a music lover, you’ve likely read your fair share of artist biographies in program notes, liner notes, or artist websites. But you’ve never read an artist bio quite like Khatia Buniatishvili’s, which contains choice lines such as, “nothing can be imposed on this young lady of the air whose wing-beats pollinate works and who sprinkles a musical cloud …

Time for a musical deep dive!