Classical Music Happy Hour

Hi Classical Music Happy Hour listeners! I’m your host, Manny Ax. I’ve heard from so many of you over the course of this season and I’m so proud of this show and the community we are creating. We’re working hard on another season with amazing guests, fun games, your listener questions, and of course great music. But in the meantime, we’re going to try something a little different. So, for the next...

Violinist and social media guru Ray Chen wraps up this season of Classical Music Happy Hour with an in-studio live performance. He chats with Manny about video games, performance anxiety, and his practice app Tonic. In our game, he joins Manny in our game called Is It a Composer or Is it Cheese? Our theme song is Schumann’s Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 performed by our host, Emanuel Ax. Ray Chen pe...

Paquito D’Rivera is composer, saxophonist and clarinetist whose work spans classical, jazz and latin music.  Born in Havana, Cuba,  D’Rivera started his career playing with the National Theater Orchestra at the age of 10 and has been on stage for seven decades.  During their  chat, Paquito and Manny discuss what beef and beans have to do with Benny Goodman playing Carnegie Hall, what kind of music...

Pianist Yefim Bronfman, “Fima,” chats with Manny about their decades-long friendship, their love of sports, their surprising anxiety around live broadcast performances.  They’ll answer listeners’ questions about recovering from injuries and picking repertoire, even the stuff no one heard of!  Fima and Manny work together in our Newly Dead game to identify odd ways composers have died. Our theme so...

Comedian Isabel Hagen is a classically trained violist, and a filmmaker. As a comedian, she has been featured on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and was a New Face of Comedy at the Just for Laughs festival in Montréal. She talks to Manny about how the viola can be funny and make people love classical music by making them laugh! Our theme song is Schumann’s Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 perfor...

The New York Times has called Nicholas Britell: “The composer at the frontier of film music.” Britell has written scores for Hollywood movies including: The Big Short , Moonlight and If Beale Street Could talk. Listeners might best recognize his work from the theme of the HBO series “Succession” for which he’s won the Emmy for the iconic theme song. He’ll talk about writing for the big screen and...

Actor David Hyde Pierce has had a long career in film, television and the theater.  He’s best known to listeners for his portrayal of Niles Crane on the sitcom "Frasier."  He joins Manny to talk about his life and love of classical music and listen to some of their favorite recordings.  They also play a game called “Animal or Instrument.”  Our theme song is Schumann’s Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 p...

Composer Jeanine Tesori is a two time Tony Award winner, a two time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and in 2024, she became the first woman composer to open the Metropolitan Opera Opera season in its 139 year history. On this edition of CMHH she tells Manny about her time living in a lighthouse, about her love of Stravinsky, and why she decided not to be a doctor.  Our theme song is Schumann’s Ara...

Live from Tanglewood, cellist Yo-Yo Ma chats with Manny about their long musical relationship and friendship.  The two treat the live audience to a few musical performances, and they take questions from the audience about their burning musical questions, like “why does a piano have three pedals?” Our theme song is Schumann’s Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 performed by our host, Emanuel Ax. Music Perf...

Columbia University Professor of Linguistics John McWhorter, chats with Manny about swear words, Broadway, and tackles the conundrums of musical etymology.  McWhorter also makes the case for the brilliant first movement of Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet in B minor . The two then square off in a game about famous classical pieces that bombed at their premieres. Our theme song is Schumann’s Arabeske in C...

Renowned American composer John Adams joins Manny to discuss his approach to opera composition, the stories behind his intriguingly titled works, and the time he was once mistaken for John Cage. Adams answers listener questions on the evolution of music and the emotional pull of minor keys.  He also  shares his love of Stravinsky and Handel. For our game segment, Adams puts his knowledge to the te...

Composer Gabriela Ortiz joins Manny to talk about her grandfather’s surprising connection to Mahler, her own compositional process, and her enduring love for works by Debussy and Stravinsky. Listeners call in with tricky questions about folk music’s influence on classical works, new developments in orchestral instruments, and the realities of orchestra cliques. In our game segment, Manny puts Gabr...

Composer and pianist Marc-André Hamelin joins Manny to talk about growing up with a musical father, the mechanics of piano playing, and the influences behind his prolific performing and recording career. He answers listener questions about piano transcriptions and why music is written in so many different keys. In the music segment, Hamelin performs one of his favorite works by Rachmaninoff live i...

Superstar pianist Yuja Wang joins Manny Ax to talk about bad pianos, encores, what influences her musical interpretations, and her love for Prokofiev. In our Newly Dead game, Yuja puts her knowledge of composer deaths to the test. Listen and Subscribe to Classical Music Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts.  Our theme song is Schumann’s Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 performed by our host, Emanu...

Join renowned pianist Emanuel Ax for Classical Music Happy Hour: a new podcast full of music, merriment, and conversation. Manny (Emanuel) talks with special guests about their lives, listens to some of their favorite classical gems, plays music-inspired games, and answers questions from listeners. Grab a cocktail and press play on a podcast celebrating our love of all things classical music! Epis...

Hello Our Common Nature fans, Ana González is dropping into the feed to tell you about Classical Music Happy Hour, a new podcast you might be interested in, hosted by Yo-Yo Ma’s friend and pianist Emanuel Ax. 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,...

Yo-Yo Ma has wanted to use his cello to communicate with whales for half his life. And, in Hawai’i he got a chance. With help from the Polyneisan Voyaging Society and hula master Snowbird Bento, Yo-Yo learns about the ancient art of Hawaiian chant, what one local singer describes to him as their “contribution to the orchestra of the world.” Then Ana and Yo-Yo board a legendary canoe, Hōkūleʻa, wit...

On the island of Molokaʻi in Hawaii, we trace the spiritual power of mana , from a sacred grove to the Kalaupapa colony, where music, story, and Yo-Yo Ma’s performance honor the resilience and memory of those who came before. Perched on a plateau on the southeast side of the island of Molokaʻi sits a grove of kukui trees. Mikiʻala Pescaia tells us that beneath the roots of these trees are the bone...

West Virginia is defined by its beauty and its coal, two things that can work against each other. Yo-Yo Ma felt this as soon as stepped foot in its hills. This episode explores how music and poetry help process the emotions of a community besieged with disaster and held together by pride and duty. We travel down the Coal River with third-generation coal miner Chris Saunders, who tells us how coal...

This episode begins in Fairbanks, AK.  Yo-Yo Ma is at a house concert with drag queen environmentalist Pattie Gonia, singer/songwriter Quinn Christopherson and Princess Daazhraii Johnson, a writer and filmmaker from the Gwich’in Nation.  They were all performing to help their communities process the negative effects of climate change in Alaska.  Salmon have been disappearing for decades, but now t...

In the Smoky Mountains, traditions layer and intersect. Yo-Yo Ma believes that story and song can help us grapple with America’s complicated history. This episode highlights two stories of people who are reclaiming their connections to the land. The first brings us to Cherokee, North Carolina, where Lavita Hill and Mary Crowe are working to change the name of the tallest mountain in the range back...

A cave can hold secrets. Louisville Orchestra conductor Teddy Abrams knows that, which is why he wrote a piece for symphony orchestra to be performed entirely underground. This episode takes us into Mammoth Cave to hear a performance that unlocks a centuries of stories preserved by the caves' seemingly endless walls. One of those is the story of Jerry Bransford , who brought the Bransford name bac...

The series opens with a window into the Yo-Yo universe, one where music and nature work together. Host Ana González guides us into Yo-Yo Ma’s mindset, connecting Bach to leaves, birds, and sunlight. That takes us to a sunrise in Acadia National Park in Maine, where Chris Newell leads Yo-Yo and Wabanaki musicians in a musical performance to welcome the dawn.  Featuring music by Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Newe...

When the world stopped in 2020, cellist Yo-Yo Ma started thinking about how music can reconnect people to nature. In this limited podcast series, Yo-Yo travels around the country to make music and meet people who have deep connections to the earth.  Host Ana González joins him to uncover stories of the ways that culture binds us to nature, from Maine to Appalachia and Hawaii.  The result is a seve...