The Open Ears Project: Recent Episodes
WQXR & WNYC Studios
Part mix tape, part sonic love-letter, the Open Ears Project is a daily podcast where people share the classical track that means the most to them. Each episode offers a soulful glimpse into other human lives, helping us to hear this music—and each other—differently.
The Open Ears Project is produced by WQXR and WNYC Studios, home of great podcasts including Radiolab, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media, Nancy, and Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin.
Hello Open Ears fans, pianist Emanuel Ax is dropping into the feed to introduce Classical Music Happy Hour, a new podcast he hosts that you might enjoy. The show is all about the joy in chatting about music with all sorts of people, including some of Manny’s dearest friends like pianist Yuja Wang, composer John Adams, actor David Hyde Pierce, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. So grab a drink and join Manny Ax for music, merriment and conversation.
Listen and Subscribe to Classical Music Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
Classical Music Happy Hour is produced by WQXR in partnership with Carnegie Hall.
Ana González is here to introduce you to her new podcast, Our Common Nature, a musical journey with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. When the world stopped in 2020, Yo-Yo Ma started thinking about how music can reconnect people to the natural world. In this limited podcast series, Yo-Yo goes around the country to places where people have deep connections to the earth. Host Ana González joins him to uncover stories of how culture binds us to nature, from Maine to Appalachia and Hawaii. The result is a seven-episode series that fuses music, personal narratives, and local histories from across the United States.
Listen to more episodes from Our Common Nature series.
Visit the website at ourcommonnaturepodcast.org.
Janna Levin is a theoretical cosmologist and professor of astronomy and physics at Barnard College in New York City, specializing in the study of black holes. A Guggenheim Fellow, she’s authored several books on the topics of space, mathematics, and the impassioned people that study them; her latest book, “Black Hole Survival Guide,” allows readers to imagine an encounter with a black hole.
In the final episode of this season of The Open Ears Project, Janna Levin uses the music of Mozart to venture into the world of perfect circles, spacetime, and the drive to reach a platonic ideal. She muses on the benefits of limitations and rules, and how they have led to some of the most revolutionary scientific discoveries and works of art, from Einstein’s theory of relativity to Mozart’s unfinished Requiem Mass.
This recording of Mozart’s Requiem was provided courtesy of the New York Philharmonic.
Hanna Arie-Gaifman served as the director of the Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y for over 20 years, where she produced countless multidisciplinary projects, cementing 92NY’s place as a leading literary and performance art venue in New York City. Before then, Aire-Gaifman worked around the world as an arts administrator, linguist, and professor.
In this episode, Gaifman shares why Bach’s Sarabande from the English Suite No. 5 reminds her of her late cousin, Zuzana Růžičková, who survived the Terezin concentration camp during World War II and went on to become an acclaimed harpsichordist.
In this episode, you'll hear a performance of the Sarabande on the piano by András Schiff from his 1988 Decca recording of the Bach English Suites, as well as performance on the harpsichord by Zuzana Růžičková, courtesy of Arie-Gaifman.
Caroline Shaw is a tireless musician, active as a violinist, vocalist, producer, and composer. She’s won multiple Grammy awards and, along with Kendrick Lamar, is one of the youngest recipients of the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Throughout her career, she has continuously experimented across genres, her collaborations spanning from the likes of Nas and Rosalía to So Percussion and Roomful of Teeth.
With all her acclaim today, it is hard to imagine that Shaw was once just a kid at band camp. In this episode of the Open Ears Project, Shaw recalls performing Felix Mendelssohn’s “Octet for Strings” as a teenager at summer camp, an experience which sparked her lifelong love of chamber music.
This recording of Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-Flat Major was performed by the Gringolts Quartet and Meta4 from the 2020 Bis record, “Octets.”
By day, Nick Ferrone is a Brooklyn real estate agent, but on most Saturday nights, he can be found playing the harmonica at Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook. As the seventh of eight kids, Ferrone reaped the benefits of being exposed to records that most kids his age weren’t listening to, including the one that inspired him to start playing the harmonica: “Giant Step” by Taj Mahal. He also serves as a board member for the Hillside Dog Park and is a passionate fine pencil artist.
In this episode, Ferrone shares his love for Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” and explains why he thinks it gets a bad rap for being too funereal. He describes the beauty he hears in the music and reflects on how it accompanied him through his child’s heart surgery.
You might know actress Lucy Boynton from the television mini-series “The Ipcress File” and films like “Chevalier” and “Murder on the Orient Express.” She grew up with a music-loving family who always had something playing in the background. Here, Boynton shares a favorite piano piece by Chopin and reflects on the power of music to establish tone in filmmaking and to help her get into character.
This episode features Chopin’s Nocturne in B flat minor, Op. 9, No. 1: “Larghetto”, as performed by Maria João Pires from her 1996 Deutsche Grammophon recording “Chopin — The Nocturnes.”
If anyone can claim the title of Renaissance Woman, it is Martha Lane Fox. Though she gained prominence during the dot-com boom of the 1990s, her career has since led her serve as the Chancellor of Open University in the United Kingdom; to sit on the boards of companies likeChanel, WeTransfer, and Twitter; and, in 2013, she became the youngest female member to serve in the House of Lords.
In this episode, Lane Fox reflects on her journey of recovery after a car accident in Morocco and explains how the “Prisoners’ Chorus” from Beethoven’s“Fidelio”informs her passion for prison reform.
This Deutsche Grammophon recording of Beethoven’s “Prisoners’ Chorus” from Fidelio is performed by the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Chorus under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.
Steve Reich is one of the most important composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. A leader in developing and popularizing what many describe as minimalist music — but which Reich has often preferred to describe as music that unfolds over a gradual process — his music helped reassert the value of tonality and sonority within newly composed concert music and influenced generations of musicians.
In this episode, Reich recalls the first time he heard the music of French medieval composer Pérotin, without whose influence some of his music “never would have happened,” and he reflects on why early music sounds so fresh to contemporary ears.
The recording of “Viderunt Omnes” featured on this episode was performed by The Hilliard Ensemble on the 1989 ECM New Series album, “Perotin.”
“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” is one of Bach’s best known works. For acclaimed violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, it has been part of her life since she was a child and has accompanied her through some of her life’s most important moments. As she puts it, “Bach is always the answer — for the joyous moments in life as much as for the moments where you doubt where you stand and what tomorrow brings.”
This episode features recordings of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” performed by Daniil Trifonov on the 2022 Deutsche Grammophon album, “BACH: The Art of Life;” and by The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge on the 1998 Decca album “The King’s Collection.”
All classical musicians are devoted to the art of reinterpretation — of trying to make the old feel new again. Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson actually manages to pull it off. Whether he’s performing keyboard music hundreds of years old or a piece hot off the press, one has the feeling that they’ve never heard this music before, or this music played in this way. As Ólafsson puts it, “I have this feeling that everything I do is contemporary.”
In this episode, Ólafsson reflects on some of his earliest musical memories, what it was like to grow up amid the harsh and unpredictable beauty of Iceland, and how discovering the keyboard music of Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau changed his life.
To learn more about Víkingur Ólafsson and his latest recording, J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, visit his website at www.vikingurolafsson.com.
This episode of The Open Ears Project had additional production assistance from Curtis Macdonald. The recording of “Le Rappel des Oiseaux” featured was performed by Víkingur Ólafsson on the 2020 Deutsche Grammophon album, “Debussy · Rameau.”
By now, Garth Greenwell is an award-winning author, poet, literary critic, and teacher of writing whose novels include “What Belongs To You” and “Cleanness.” But his first creative aspiration was as a musician: He attended the Interlochen Academy for the Arts and, later, the Eastman School of Music, focusing on vocal performance.
In this episode, Greenwell recalls his introduction to music and meditates on his identity as a gay man growing up in rural Kentucky. A high school choir teacher gave Greenwell his first vocal lessons and directed him to the music of Benjamin Britten as performed by Britten’s partner, Peter Pears. Despite the grim themes of their song cycle “Winter Words,” Greenwell listened to this music over and over again, finding within it his first example of queer love.
Greenwell writes about books, music, and more at his substack To A Green Thought.
This episode contains a discussion of sexuality-based discrimination and a quote of a homophobic slur. Listener discretion is advised.
This recording of Benjamin Britten’s Winter Words is performed by tenor Peter Pears in the 1972 Decca album “Britten, Peter Pears, Benjamin Britten – Winter Words / Seven Sonnets Of Michelangelo.”
Jennifer Egan has spent a lifetime thinking about what makes a good story — to good effect. Her novels have received many awards and recognitions, including the Pulitzer Prize for “A Visit From the Good Squad.” Its companion book and her latest work, “The Candy House,” was named one of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022.
They say that one of the best ways to become a good writer is to read, but in this episode, Egan demonstrates what writers can learn from other art forms. For her, the music of Chopin exemplifies how “surprise, inevitability, variability [and] multiple fronts of action” can craft an unforgettable narrative — even without words.
The performance of Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23 featured in this episode is by Krystian Zimerman and comes from his 1988 Deutsche Grammophon record, "Chopin - 4 Balladen - Barcarolle - Fantasie."
Rowan Williams is a British theologian and poet. From 2003-2012, he served as the Archbishop of Canterbury — a role that placed him, along with the British monarch, at the head of the Anglican Church. As one of today’s most influential religious leaders, Williams has often been the subject of both praise and controversy for his outspoken views, including as a critic of the Iraq War and a proponent for LGBTQ+ inclusion.
In the years since Williams first heard Bach’s Cello Suites as a college student, he has returned to them again and again. In this episode, Williams explores the connection between music and joy, and explains how listening to Bach feels similar to religious contemplation.
This recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Suite for Cello Solo No. 1 in G featured on this episode comes from Jian Wang’s 2005 Deutsche Grammophon record, “Bach: The Cello Suites.”
Dexter Filkins is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, former Iraq War correspondent for the New York Times, and author of the bestselling book, “The Forever War.” He’s currently a staff writer for The New Yorker.
In this episode, Filkins recalls how Ravel’s music gave him respite during his “nightmare years” covering the war in Iraq. He explains how Ravel, who served as an ambulance driver during World War I, balances suffering and hope in the second movement of his Piano Concerto in G Major.
The performance of Ravel’s "Adagio" from his Concerto for Piano in G Major featured on this episode comes from the 1998 Deutsche Grammophon album "Ravel: Piano Concertos; Valses nobles et sentimentales," featuring pianist Krystian Zimerman as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of Pierre Boulez.
As one of the leading conductors of our time, Marin Alsop has collected a lot of “firsts”: She’s the first woman to head a major orchestra in the United States, South America, Austria and the United Kingdom. Throughout her career, she has also tirelessly advocated for equitable music education and for professional opportunities for other female conductors.
In this episode, Alsop talks about her deep admiration for Beethoven and why, despite being one of the most performed classical pieces ever and written 200 years ago, his Symphony No. 9 (the “Ode to Joy”) remains fresh to modern ears. For her, Beethoven is not just a model musician — but also a model for “living on the planet as a human being.”
The performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 featured in this episode was provided courtesy of the New York Philharmonic.
Nathalie Joachim is a Grammy-nominated flutist, vocalist and composer. She is the co-founder of the acclaimed flute-meets-electronica duo Flutronix, as well as the composer of the evening-length work “Fanm d’Ayiti,” which explores her heritage and, more broadly, women’s voices in Haiti. Her recently-released album “Ki moun ou ye” (“Which person are you?”) continues the musically-grounded investigation into identity.
In this episode, Joachim recalls a formative experience with the music of Brahms, connecting her attraction to his music with the rhythmically inventive music of her family’s native Haiti.
The performance of Brahms Symphony No. 3 used in this episode features the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Alan Gilbert. Recording provided courtesy of the New York Philharmonic.
Elizabeth Day is an author, broadcaster, and host of the podcast “How to Fail,” where she interviews guests about what they have learned from failure. In this episode, Day reflects on a performance that has guided her through different stages of her life: Jacqueline Du Pré’s rendition of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor.
From the disappointment of a Valentine's Day gone awry to the devastating loss of a former partner, Day has turned to the depths of beauty and pain evoked by this music and continually relied upon it to help her feel understood amidst the tumult of grief.
If you’d like to hear a full performance of this work, you can find it on the Warner Classics Website.
This performance of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor features soloist Jacqueline Du Pré from the Warner Classics record “The Great Concertos. Elgar, Saint-Saëns, Haydn, Dvořák, Haydn.”
Damien Sneed is an award-winning musician, conductor, composer and arts educator who works across classical, jazz, R&B and other genres. When he was five years old, Sneed’s parents told him he was adopted. He walks us through the story of how, through a series of dreams and coincidences, he eventually reunited with his biological family and learned to accept the complexity of life and music alike.
In this episode, Sneed reflects on how playing Liszt’s Étude No 3, “Un Sospiro,” for both his biological and adoptive mothers allowed him to finally loosen his grip around ideas of adoption, rejection and acceptance.
This performance of Franz Liszt’s “Concert Etude No. 3” is by André Watts from his EMI record, “André Watts Plays Liszt - Album 2." The performance of “The Will of God” is by Karen Clarke Sheard and Kierra Sheard from the Island Black Music record “Finally Karen."
Deborah Frances-White is a comedian, writer, and host of “The Guilty Feminist” podcast, where she explores the balancing act between feminist idealism and human imperfection.
In this episode, White reflects on her upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness and shares a story about the first time she saw a performance of Mozart’s opera “Così fan tutte.” On the train home from the performance, she shared a serendipitous encounter with a stranger that could have been lifted from an opera plot. To this day, when White listens to “Soave si il vento” — a trio from the opera meaning “may the wind be gentle” — it evokes for her “the longing and the loss for all the loves that might have been.”
This performance of “Soave sia il vento” comes from the 1997 EMI recording of “Così fan tutte” by the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Riccardo Muti.
Tom Hiddleston is an actor beloved around the world for his roles in film, television, and the stage, most notably for his portrayal of the Norse god Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before all that, he was a student at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, balancing both high hopes and uncertainty for his future.
For the debut episode of the long-awaited second season of "The Open Ears Project," Hiddleston recalls a powerful memory from those days. While driving to a hiking spot, Arvo Pärt’s "Spiegel im Spiegel" played on the radio, synchronizing with the landscape to evoke a sense of the eternal and the power of art to remind us of our humanity.
The performance of "Spiegel im Spiegel" featured in this episode is by violinist Nicola Benedetti and pianist Alexi Grynyuk, from Benedetti's 2009 album, "Fantasie."
The Open Ears Project returns for a new season on February 12! From tales of memorable moments in nature and fleeting encounters with strangers – to recollections of music that helped in difficult times – The Open Ears Project features people sharing a personal story about the classical track that means the most to them, and why.
This season’s guests include a wide range of voices – many in creative fields – including actors, authors, and journalists, as well classical and genre-busting musicians and conductors about the music that inspires their journey.
Part mixtape, part sonic love letter, eachepisode creates a moment to reflect on the question, what if we made a habit of opening our ears — to classical music and to each other? Whether listeners are seeking an introduction to new pieces or encounters with powerful storytelling, listeners will enjoy brief but enduring meditations with artistic works and soulful stories spanning the range of the human experience.
The Open Ears Project was created by Clemency Burton-Hill. This season will be hosted by Terrance McKnight. New episodes drop every Monday so listeners can start their week on the right note.
“I find it lifts me out of wherever I am... I just love it.”
For this bonus festive episode, actor Tom Hiddleston fondly reminisces about one of his earliest childhood memories, dancing along to a VHS of The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky. He reveals that the energetic Russian Dance is still a piece he listens to when he needs a shot of vitality in his day.
Tom Hiddleston is a British actor who has won multiple awards for his work on stage and screen. A performer of vast range, from Shakespeare to John Le Carré to comic book characters, he is best known for playing Loki in the Marvel Universe and recently made his Broadway debut in an acclaimed production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to catch up on previous episodes or delve deeper into our companion playlist.
The Open Ears Project will be back in 2020 for season two, so stay tuned...
“The language of music brings out different parts of us. It's universal. It's probably the most important thing with which [we] can make peace.”
For the final episode in our opening season of The Open Ears Project, relationship therapist Esther Perel talks about the first time she heard Fauré’s Requiem as a young woman and how it seemed to “understand” an inexpressible sadness she was carrying inside her.
She describes with great tenderness the way music connects her to her mother, a survivor of the Holocaust, and how this piece transports her to something akin to a religious experience.
Esther Perel is a psychotherapist, relationships expert, author, and creator and host of the podcast Where Should We Begin? Season 3 of Where Should We Begin? Comes out Thursday October 10th on Spotify. Later this fall she will launch a new podcast on Spotify focused on workplace dynamics. Learn more at Estherperel.com/podcast
Did you like the track Esther chose? Listen to the music in full:
In Paradisum by Gabriel Fauré
“For me on a chaotic day, where maybe things are out of control or I don't have a lot of control over what's happening... I listen to this on repeat. And it smooths out some of the angular parts of the day.”
Producer Krystal Hawes talks about how as a jazz student she had held classical music at a distance, thinking it was something perfect and pristine. But hearing the unexpected, almost jazz-like soundworld of Maurice Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte helped open the door to a lifelong love of classical music.
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Krystal Hawes is a producer and project coordinator at WQXR.
Did you like the track Krystal chose? Listen to the music in full:
Pavane pour une infante défunte by Maurice Ravel
“There’s a patience that it asks for, and a patience it imparts, and you sort of have to be tall enough to ride this ride.”
In this episode, Dessa talks about how when her father played her the “Chaconne” from J.S. Bach’s Partita for Violin in D Minor as part of a classical music “starter kit”, the piece immediately spoke to her, not just because she finds an unexpected connection between rap and classical music, but in how its range of emotions, and its interplay between beauty and anger have given her something to lean on in challenging times.
Dessa is a singer and rapper with the Doomtree crew of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has two upcoming shows in New York at National Sawdust and The Greene Space.**
Did you like the track Dessa chose? Listen to the music in full:
Chaconne for Violin by J.S. Bach
“It changed my life… I had this revelation, juxtaposing my own privilege and the lucky life I had, compared to what she had gone through.”
In this episode, Jesse Eisenberg talks about how a trip to visit family in Poland made him realize how removed he had been from the experience of the Holocaust, and how that sense of guilt inspired him to write The Revisionist, his play about a cousin who’d survived the the Holocaust.
To create the right sense of place, Jesse used Polish expatriate composer Frédéric Chopin’s pyrotechnic Etude Opus 10, No. 1 as part of the production.
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Jesse Eisenberg is an actor and playwright.
Did you like the track Jesse chose? Listen to the music in full:
Etude Opus 10, No. 1 by Frederic Chopin
“It just makes me feel so much, this piece. There’s something happening here that’s so incredibly sweet but also so mournful.”
In this episode, Christopher Wheeldon talks about how he discovered Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev after seeing his first ballet, Romeo and Juliet, at the Royal Opera House. He later fell in love with Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto, wearing out a cassette tape of it in the process of playing it over and over.
The music stuck with him for years to come, and though he’d abandoned previous attempts to create a ballet for it, once Wheeldon started his own company, he finally felt able to choreograph for the music he’d connected with so strongly as a child.
Christopher Wheeldon is a Tony-Award winning choreographer. His work includes An American in Paris, the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games and the minimalist ballet After The Rain, which inspired the Open Ears episode by Megan Reid.
Did you like the track Christopher chose? Listen to the music in full:
Violin Concerto No. 2, second movement by Sergei Prokofiev
“If the lights were on in the audience, listening to this music I would just be flayed open...”
Children’s author and television producer Megan Reid talks about how a performance of choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain sparked her lifelong obsession with ballet.
Watching the ballet’s second half, a stark dance duet set to Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, Reid found that great dance — like great writing — created a world she wanted to live in forever.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to receive a new episode every day or delve deeper into our companion playlist.
Megan Reid is a children’s book author and the director of literary scouting and development at FX Networks.
Did you like the track Megan chose? Listen to the music in full:
Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt
“Beethoven, the guy who created art to speak to justice and equality. The guy who loved family, you know, so close to his mother — like I am.”
WQXR evening host Terrance McKnight talks about a late Beethoven bagatelle and how the composer’s perseverance in the face of adversity draws a connection between, family, art, and the Langston Hughes poem “Life is Fine.”
Terrance McKnight is the evening host at WQXR.
Did you like the track Terrance chose? Listen to the music in full:
Bagatelles, Op. 126, No. 1 by Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by Terrance McKnight
“When I was younger, classical music was only played in, like, bookstores... But nowadays you can expose children to the music in a way that allows them just to appreciate [it] without any stereotypes.”
In this episode, New York City preschool teacher Justin Jackson tells us how Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King inspired him as a child to march around the living room, and how he shares that excitement with his young students as he passes on his love of creativity, imagination, and the arts.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to receive a new episode every day or delve deeper into our companion playlist.
Justin Jackson is a New York City preschool art teacher.
Did you like the track Justin chose? Listen to the music in full:
In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg
“When I hear that piece playing, my back relaxes, actually. That's where I carry all my stress.”
In this episode, Alison talks about how she gave up learning the piano when she was young after the sudden death of her piano teacher, and how the rocking ebbs and flows of Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 helped her come back to the instrument as an adult — and learn to let go.
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Alison Stewart is a Peabody Award–winning journalist and the host of WNYC’s show All Of It.
Did you like the track Alison chose? Listen to the music in full:
Gymnopédie No. 1 by Erik Satie
"I think that’s the beauty of music, there’s eternity in it. And I think that’s true also of architecture even in ruined architecture, you can see an [eternal] sense of a spirit.”
Architect Daniel Libeskind talks about listening to the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by J. S. Bach, and how music, like architecture, creates a shared space — rooted in memory but looking ahead to eternity — that connects us all.
Daniel Libeskind is an Polish-American architect best known for designing the Jewish Museum Berlin and his master plan for the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan.
Did you like the track Daniel chose? Listen to the music in full:
Toccata and Fugue in D minor by J.S. Bach (arranged for orchestra by Leopold Stokowski)
“It’s a sad peacefulness that sometimes we all need. When we need to take a breath — just before starting something new.”
WQXR’s Jacqui Cheng talks about her journey in finding the Adagio movement from J.S. Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 1.
Her interest in Bach started with the soundtrack to the Atari 2600 game “Gyruss” (which included 8-bit snippets of Bach's Fugue in D Minor), and led her to the public library, where she found emotional comfort in Bach’s resolution of dissonances.
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Jacqui Cheng is a musician, technologist, and WQXR’s Editor-in-Chief.
Did you like the track Jacqui chose? Listen to the music in full:
Violin Sonata No.1, Adagio by J.S. Bach
“There [are] so many emotions in the piece, and so many states of consciousness — there's not one thing. There's an intensity of relationships that unfold over time.”
Trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis talks about how Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16 helped him understand the role of music — and the musician — in connecting the past and the future.
Beyond his technical achievements, Marsalis relates with Beethoven’s ability to unflinchingly investigate and combine conflicting emotions and states of consciousness to create art that unfolds in time.
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Trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis is the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Did you like the track Wynton chose? Listen to the music in full:
String Quartet No. 16, second movement by L.V. Beethoven
“The best children's books have this moment of ‘Why am I here? What am I doing?’ ... And I feel that in this music.”
In this episode, Eva talks about how, each evening after finishing her day job at Instagram and spending time with her two young children, she resets by putting on the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17.
The piece’s emotional transitions help put her into the mindset of Juno Valentine, the heroine of her children’s book series.
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Eva Chen is a children’s book author and director of fashion partnerships at Instagram. Her latest book in the Juno Valentine series will be out October 29th.
Did you like the track Eva chose? Listen to the music in full:
Piano Concert No. 17, first movement by W.A. Mozart
“It actually takes you off the ground. You are floating in the clouds, which doesn't make logical sense, but that's what it feels like.”
Comedian and actor Eddie Izzard talks about Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune, and how its emotional pulse takes her outside the flow of metronomic time and into the deep connections she feels with her family and audience.
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Eddie Izzard is a stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and activist.
Did you like the track Eddie chose? Listen to the music in full:
Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy
“I think I've learned to not take things so personally through this piece of music.”
In this episode, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges discusses the song “When I am laid in earth”, also known as “Dido’s Lament”. It’s a stunning aria from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas in which Dido laments over her broken heart after her lover, the Trojan war hero Aeneas, abandons her.
The song gave Bridges insight into the nature of memory and respect that she’s taken to heart, and illustrates one of the many powerful lessons opera can teach us all.
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J'Nai Bridges is a mezzo-soprano. She’ll be appearing this season with the Metropolitan Opera as Nefertiti in Philip Glass’s Akhnaten.
Did you like the track J'Nai chose? Listen to the music in full:
"When I am laid in earth" by Henry Purcell
“Not only did it change how I listen to music. It absolutely changed how I listen to people.”
When Joe Young, army reservist and New York Public Radio receptionist, was stationed in Texas, part of his job in the army band was to play the “Taps” bugle call for soldiers who didn’t return from deployment.
The experience left him facing a crisis of confidence, until he came across Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians which gave him a new perspective on how to listen to more than just the music.
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Joe Young is a musician, composer, New York Public Radio’s receptionist and a member of the United States Army Band.
Did you like the track Joe chose? Listen to the music in full:
Music For 18 Musicians: Pulses by Steve Reich
“In a scene of such brutality, to have something of such delicacy must have been a quiet kind of miracle.”
Writer Robert Macfarlane remembers how he first read about Chopin’s Berceuse in the wartime diaries of Welsh poet Edward Thomas, whose nature writing inspired Macfarlane’s own.
Thomas, who died in 1917 on the Western Front, chronicled how he and his fellow soldiers found moments of peace in music — including this lullaby, which helped them find sleep on what would be their final night.
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Robert Macfarlane is an award-winning writer on travel, landscape, nature, and the human heart, and fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University. His latest book is Underland.
Did you like the track Robert chose? Listen to the music in full:
Berceuse by Frédéric Chopin
“The possibility for you as a listener is to open yourself up enough be taken somewhere that seems far from you.”
Nicola Benedetti tells us how as a 10-year-old she first heard the second movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, and without knowing what “this thing from heaven” was, the sound resonated with her in a way she couldn't quite yet understand.
Over 20 years later, having played it in concert halls around the world, she reflects on the concerto's ability to capture the full range of human emotion that can connect to any listener.
Nicola Benedetti is a violinist and music educator. She recently appeared as a soloist at the BBC Proms and with at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music performing Wynton Marsalis' first Violin Concerto.
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Violin Concerto, second movement - Beethoven
“For me, this is a melody of truth.”
Lee Hill, Director of Public Engagement at New York Public Radio, talks about how “Little's Theme”, from Nicholas Britell’s score for Moonlight, let him find a way to stand in his own truth.
Hill connected with the film like few other works of art he’d experienced, and the score voiced feelings he had never been able to put into words, centering him in his own experience and building a connection with other listeners.
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Lee Hill is the Director of Public Engagement and Content Culture at WNYC.
Did you like the track Lee chose? If so you can listen to it in full here:
"Little's Theme" by Nicholas Britell
“Music defies language in so many ways. One of its joys is that it takes words and direct meaning and narrative out of the equation.”
In this episode, Sam Mendes talks about how, when he was looking for music to capture the emotional dissonances of the opening sequence of American Beauty, he found the perfect mood with Carl Orff’s Gassenhauer (which, in turn, inspired Thomas Newman’s Oscar-nominated score). Today the music still reminds Sam of this happy, creative period in his life, and of the collision of American and European culture in his work.
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Sam Mendes is an Oscar and Tony award-winning producer and director. His films include American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Skyfall and the upcoming 1917.
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Gassenhauer by Carl Orff
“Great music transcends time... everything. No matter where this came from, happiness is happiness.”
In this episode, actor, comedienne, and podcaster Rachel “La Loca” Strauss-Muñiz talks about sharing Mozart’s First Piano Sonata with her babies, and reflects on how their joy at hearing Mozart reminds her of how so much of the music we listen to is rooted in classical music — and how music connects us all.
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Rachel Strauss-Muñiz is an actor, comedienne and writer. She co-hosts the podcast Latinos Out Loud.
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Piano Sonata No. 1 - I. Allegro by W.A. Mozart
“It's more just about feeling the wealth of greatness and the depth of humanity that these things that I love really harbor.”
In this episode, musician, composer, and bandleader Jon Batiste talks about revisiting Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. When he first heard the piece it seemed like cacophony, but repeat listenings (and seeing it used in Disney's Fantasia) gave him an understanding of how the composer was playing with form and narrative and upsetting expectations — ideas Jon would go on to incorporate into his own music.
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Jon Batiste is a musician, composer, bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, music director for The Atlantic magazine, and co-artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
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The Rite of Spring, Part 1 - Introduction by Igor Stravinsky
“It transports me back into this bedroom that I had as a kid. Sitting in my bay window, overlooking the field, leading up to the forest. There's nothing else out there.”
Opera singer Jamie Barton grew up in an isolated rural community in northwest Georgia. Her first listen to Chopin's Nocturne No. 21 in C Minor — found on a CD titled Chopin and Champagne — began an obsession with classical music that turned her teenage alienation into a powerful sense of belonging to music and connection with its listeners, whoever they are and wherever they come from.
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Jamie Barton is a mezzo-soprano. She is singing the part of Orfeo in the Metropolitan Opera’s fall production of Orfeo & Euridice.
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Nocturne No. 21 by Frédéric Chopin
“She loved the interaction of what a conversation is, and that's what chamber music is — it’s talking to people with your instruments.”
In this episode, conductor and cellist Eric Jacobsen talks about Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 1. It was his mother’s favorite piece, and 25 years after her death it still reminds him of the love for music and other human beings she passed on to him — both of which come together in the ongoing conversation of chamber music.
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Eric Jacobsen is a conductor and cellist, and co-founder of New York’s dynamic young orchestra, The Knights.
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Piano Trio No. 1, Second Movement by Franz Schubert
“I think when a close friend dies the first thing you confront is the love.”
In this episode, Ian McEwan talks about how this slow, contemplative second movement of J.S. Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins — in which the instruments answer one another and play in unison like a pair of lovers — walked him through a teenage “eruption of self-awareness” and longing, and later in life helped him process the loss of a beloved friend.
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Ian McEwan is a British author. His works include Atonement and the Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam.
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Concerto for Two Violins by J.S. Bach
“It is now part of the soundtrack of my life.”
In this episode, podcaster and author Aminatou Sow talks about hearing the Juba Dance, from Florence Price’s first symphony, on the day she received her cancer diagnosis, and how the piece’s mood of joyful defiance supported her in the face of adversity.
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Aminatou Sow is a podcaster, author, and co-host of Call Your Girlfriend with Ann Friedman.
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Symphony No.1, III. Juba Dance by Florence Price
“In music there are no shields, there is nothing... it's just you, and the music.”
In this episode, guitarist Miloš Karadaglić talks about “Lágrima,” which Spanish composer Francisco Tárrega supposedly wrote as a response to the homesickness he’d felt while visiting London, England — an emotion Miloš connected with deeply when he moved to the same city to pursue his own career.
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Miloš Karadaglić is a classical guitarist, his new album is out now.
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Lágrima by Francisco Tárrega
“Music is always there for us, we just have to reach out and connect to it.”
In this episode, yoga teacher Connie Viglietti tell us about how she remembers her beloved Grandma Ginger by singing one of her favorite songs, Schubert’s “Ave Maria”, and contemplates the transporting power that music has to connect us to the people we love the most, even if they are no longer with us.
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Connie Viglietti teaches yoga at Yoga Vida and is co-founder of Emaya, an organization that empowers women through yoga and meditation.
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“Ave Maria” by Franz Schubert
“Every firefighter feels some fear — a little bit — or they wouldn't be human. It's the fact that you have that fear and still do your job is what makes them amazing.”
In this episode, New York City firefighter Rob Vogt — who spent the months following 9/11 as part of the “bucket brigade” searching the rubble for the bodies of those killed in the attack — talks about finding comfort in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, in particular the adrenaline rush of the helicopter attack scene set to Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” from his opera Die Walküre.
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Rob Vogt is a New York City firefighter. The Tunnel to Towers Foundation was set up in honor of Rob's uncle Stephen Siller.
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"Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner
“It never ceases to lift my spirits. You listen to this music, and this music is soaring.”
Actor Alec Baldwin talks about how the soaring soundscape of the Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia from Khachaturian’s ballet Spartacus revives him when he needs to reset.
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Alec Baldwin is an actor and the host of WNYC’s podcast Here’s The Thing With Alec Baldwin. You can also hear him as host of WQXR’s broadcasts with the New York Philharmonic.
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Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia from the Spartacus Suite No. 2 by Aram Khachaturian
Which piece of music speaks to your soul? Each bite-sized episode of The Open Ears Project introduces you to a new classical work and offers a brief and soulful glimpse into a human life, helping us to listen to this music—and each other—differently.
Starting on Tuesday September 10th you can follow the project from day 1 by subscribing to our newsletter and following #OpenEarsProject on Instagram and Twitter.
The Open Ears Project is produced by WQXR and WNYC Studios.