Brian Wise

Andrew Shapiro has played the piano at a Manhattan McDonald's for over seven years. Hints of Chopin-esque harmonies mingle with shouts of “May I help the next customer please?”

The Park Avenue Armory has named Alex Poots, currently the director of England's Manchester International Festival, as its first artistic director.

Kim Jong Il, who died Saturday at the age of 69, took an active role in North Korean culture, and had a truly curious relationship to classical music.

"In The Bleak Midwinter" is the world’s greatest Christmas carol, according to WQXR.org's poll of leading choirmasters and choral experts from the US and the UK.

The New Russian Quartet, the resident string quartet at the Moscow Conservatory, lent its support to the protests against the allegedly fraudulent parliamentary elections.

Not only will he withdraw from the remainder of his performances this season, the conductor says that he won’t conduct at all in 2012-13.

A Carnegie Hall recital heavy on French music this Saturday will offer a chance to catch the dramatic Finnish diva in a more intimate, stylized setting.

Joshua Gersen follows such past conductors as Leonard Slatkin, David Alan Miller and Miguel Harth-Bedoya.

The news that a Russian tycoon has given the Kennedy Center $5 million likely came as little surprise in the philanthropy community.

New York City Opera has declared an impasse in negotiations with the unions representing its orchestra and chorus, with the two sides unable to reach an agreement on wages and benefits.

Among the cancellations were two weeks in January with the Boston Symphony, where he is speculated to be a potential candidate to succeed James Levine.

The Cincinnati Symphony has established a section of its concert hall where audience members can bring out their iPhones, Androids and tablets and Tweet along with the music.

In the spirit of Beethoven Awareness Month, dare to check out our list of the worst crimes against album cover design when it comes to history's greatest composer.

Olga Bloom, a violinist and violist who founded Bargemusic – which turned a sinister spot on the Brooklyn waterfront into one of New York’s most intimate venues -- died on Thanksgiving. She was 92.

The Catalan soprano Montserrat Figueras, who brought a soulful voice to a broad swath of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque vocal music, died on Wednesday in Barcelona.

The forthcoming Broadway production of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess has dropped plans for a new happy ending, following public criticism from composer Stephen Sondheim.

How do you prefer Beethoven symphonies: with the massive string sections and beefed-up choruses of the modern orchestra or the gutsy, lean sound of period-instrument groups? Weigh in here.

Owned by conductor Lorin Maazel for 66 years, the violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini has been featured in a number of his recordings and in concerts.

Feminists and black radicals, filmmakers, architects and rappers all grasped something in the emotional power of Beethoven’s music. Michael Broyles explores this in the new book Beethoven in America.

Signaling the end of an era, the two remaining Japanese members of the Tokyo String Quartet – including its founding violist – will retire in June 2013, the ensemble announced.