Music

Gigi Yellen Reflects On Her Time At NWPB

By Anjuli Dodhia
This week, we are saying goodbye to longtime classical music host Gigi Yellen. For more than ten years, Gigi has delighted NWPB listeners with music and commentary, and contributed to many more projects and initiatives. You can read or listen to her work on the Music and Culture page. We wish Gigi a happy retirement, and all the best on her next chapter. Gigi sat down with Read More

Reeder’s Movie Reviews: Oppenheimer

By Steve Reeder
Biopics are notoriously fraught with difficulty. They have to achieve an emotional and intellectual resonance, as well as a period look and feel. The script has to reflect and enhance the inherent drama in the lives of its characters, and the main one really has to matter. In Oppenheimer, the British-American writer-director Christopher Nolan embraces the challenge of Read More

Reeder’s Movie Reviews: Barbie

By Steve Reeder
barbie movie picture
You might not have imagined a connection between the new Barbie and the acclaimed 2001: A Space Odyssey. True enough, Barbie the toy character does have pilot and astronaut on her résumé. In this case, however, she makes her big screen appearance to the accompaniment of Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, enhanced by the droll narration of Dame Helen Mirren. Read More

More Than Music: The Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival

By Thom Kokenge
The DIVA Jazz Orchestra performers stand under red lights behind podiums with the bright yellow, green, blue and red title letters of their group emblazoned on the front. The lead performers are a group of women all wearing black tops and playing jazz band instruments.
The Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival (LHJF) is a jewel among the rolling Palouse hills. Held for 56 years at the University of Idaho in Moscow, this festival has gathered on stage such luminaries as Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and the man of note, Lionel Hampton, who has the U of I School of Music named in his honor. This festival is a grand event that brings together Read More

BOOK REVIEW: The Girl Who Heard The Music

By Gigi Yellen
book cover
When’s the last time you watched a Tiny Desk Concert? NPR’s popular in-office show became the Tiny Desk (Home) Concert when the pandemic hit. On June 24, 2021, one artist’s home studio performance came from a remote island in the south Pacific Ocean, two thousand miles west of Chile. The pianist Mahani Teave (teh-AH-veh) offered not only Handel and Chopin, but also a tour Read More

Women’s History Music Moment: Bach’s Daughters

By NWPB Music
You’ve heard so much about the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, but there were daughters, too. Bach was 23, and his wife Maria Barbara was 24, when the first of their children was born. They named her Catherina Dorothea. CD grew into a singer, and helped out in her father’s music work. Fifteen years passed, her mother died, her father remarried, and finally, CD Bach Read More
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