Practice Room Breaks

This year is a landmark year for jazz at IMSLP. With classics like "Georgia on My Mind" entering the public domain, we're celebrating the deep, undeniable connection between classical music and jazz, and kicking it off by welcoming our first jazz musician to the podcast.    Jon Lampley is a trumpeter, sousaphonist, singer-songwriter, and one of the most versatile and sought after br...

Pianist and composer Conrad Tao joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about the creative process, autograph manuscripts, and inhabiting multiple musical identities. We explore how Debussy's notation reveals compositional logic, what Beethoven's crossed-out passages tell us about artistic decision-making, and where the line between composer authorship and performer interpretation reall...

How does a tiny student side project become the largest classical music library in the world? In this episode, IMSLP Founder & CEO Edward Guo joins Natalie Nedvetsky for an honest, funny, and surprisingly intimate look at the story behind IMSLP — from its beginnings at NEC to the moment it suddenly exploded across the global classical community. Edward shares his journey from growing up in Chi...

Zlatomir Fung — one of the leading cellists of his generation — joins IMSLP to trace his path from prodigious beginnings to becoming the youngest-ever International Tchaikovsky Competition winner, unpacking the mindset of competition playing and the balance between intensity, restraint, and interpretation under pressure. He delves into the intersection of analysis and expression — transcribing for...

Internationally renown violinist Simone Porter joins us to talk about her journey from early debuts with the Seattle Symphony and Royal Philharmonic to playing with the nation’s top orchestras. She answers listener questions on stage confidence and managing performance anxiety, and reflects on moments when live music completely transported her — or taught her something through the unexpected. We a...

On this episode of Practice Room Breaks, Host Natalie Vargas Nedvetsky sits down with pianist extraordinaire, Alessio Bax. Diving into is musical upbringing, deep artistic philosophies, and how winning top prizes at the Hamamatsu and Leeds International Piano Competitions at such a young age shaped the course of his career, Alessio shares his meaningful approach to programming, the mindset behind...

What did Liszt refuse to teach - and why? In the debut episode of Practice Room Breaks - the podcast , host and classical pianist Natalie Vargas Nedvetsky sits down with internationally acclaimed pianist, pedagogue and scholar Steven Spooner to uncover the surprising origins of the recital and masterclass, share untold stories from Liszt’s life and the era in which he lived, and hear excerpts from...