Music Archives - Open Source with Christopher Lydon

THIS WEEK'S SHOW: October 15, 2026

Putting people first.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:24 — 26.6MB)

, 2017

Amiri Baraka‘s death prompts me to repost a conversation we had about the music of John Coltrane, which inspired Baraka and ennobled the ambitions of his Black Arts movement. “Trane...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:15 — 70.4MB)

, 2016

Beethoven at the Piano

How did Beethoven become 'BEETHOVEN'?

This show originally aired December 2014. We’re getting the Beethoven fundamentals, as never before, at my own piano. At a short safe distance from the keyboard, I’m learning, among other...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:56 — 45.7MB)

December 8, 2016

Bob Dylan, The Poet

What was The Bard saying, really?

Bob Dylan, the poet, has been singing more than 50 years, but have you ever really stopped to listen to the words? Now that Dylan is a Nobel giant of literature, we...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:00 — 62.6MB)

July 13, 2016, 2016

Greil Marcus: America in Three Songs

"I was fascinated with the idea of songs that seem to have been written by no one."

Our country turned 240 last week—and yet it seems as if we’ve got so much growing up to do. In the 1960s—maybe the last moment in our history that felt so fraught with tension,...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:21 — 59.0MB)

, 2016

John Luther Adams: Music at the End of the World

"It's about the music, it's not about me."

John Luther Adams is our gentle wood thrush in this conversation. He’s bracing us with the mystery that humbled him on first hearing the ecstatic songster (Thoreau’s “Shakespeare among birds”)...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:03 — 55.6MB)

July 2, 2015 - 9PM, 2015

Gunther Schuller, RIP: A Life Inside Music

Schuller was the one to declare all great musics "are created equal."

When he was just a young musician, Gunther Schuller decided on four hours of sleep a night. At 18, Schuller told us, “I figured out, ‘God damn it: if I sleep...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:58 — 28.2MB)

, 2015

Whitman at War

"For me, words are musical objects."

The best of American poets and the worst of American wars met head-on 150 years ago this summer in Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps, his reflections on nursing the wounded and dying...

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April 2, 2015, 2015

J.S. Bach’s Bitter-Sweet Passion

What do you hear in Bach's "St. John Passion"?

The music in this episode comes from Boston Baroque’s 2015 performance of the Saint John Passion, conducted by Martin Pearlman. From the great Bach’s hand, two masterpieces of church theater survive. Both...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:05 — 60.3MB)

January 1, 2015, 2014

Vijay Iyer: Jazz in the 21st Century

Where is jazz headed in a new century?

Where is jazz headed in a new century? With the pianist Vijay Iyer as guide, newly tenured as a professor at Harvard, it tends toward the experimental, with drummers, young...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:02 — 63.5MB)

, 2014

The BSO’s Andris Nelsons: Maestro of ‘Emotionality’

"It's like having a Ferrari."

The Boston Symphony’s new maestro Andris Nelsons is a boisterous young athlete in an old man’s job – one of the rising 30-somethings in front of the great orchestras of...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:37 — 59.6MB)

, 2014

WWI: Remaking Music

How did composers respond to the violence of WWI?

In the last show in our series on the Great War, we're listening to the sounds that emerged from its ashes. In Vienna concert halls and New York jazz clubs,...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:18 — 46.1MB)

, 2014

Ruby Braff’s Tribute to Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong came out of the Colored Waifs’ Home in New Orleans and the honky-tonks of the red-light Storyville district. Then and ever after Louis Armstrong’s time and phrasing, his...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:20 — 46.1MB)

, 2014

Wynton Marsalis on Louis Armstrong

“What we play,” Louis Armstrong said, “is life.” We’re learning that Louis Armstrong was not just the world’s greatest trumpet player, not just the most original and influential voice in...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:55 — 45.7MB)

, 2014

Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue

In advance of our show with the jazz pianist Vijay Iyer this Thursday, we dug through our old Connection archives and found this wonderful conversation about Miles Davis’ “Kind of...

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:04 — 7.7MB)

, 2014

Norman Lebrecht: Why Not Mahler?

Norman Lebrecht is the English culture buff and blogger, author of Why Mahler? How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World. He’s made a lively career stalking the life...