Jean Sibelius rocks!! And that, my friends, is why he is our composer of the week. b. December 8, 1865 d. September 20, 1957 A national hero in Finland, Jean Sibelius (click here for pronunciation) was a late Romantic Era composer. He was most known for his seven symphonies, each one marking a new stage [...]

Late last week a member of the Salon97 community sent me a link to: http://wwww.inbflat.net/ This site is so cool that I wish I could embed the whole thing into this post. Basically, it’s a page constructed of several YouTube videos. Each is a video of someone playing a tune in B flat. They all [...]

Because composers rule, we’re starting a new tradition of publishing a post honoring a different composer each week. First up is William Grant Still, an African-American composer and Salon97 fan favorite! b. May 11, 1895 in Woodville, Mississippi d. December 3, 1978 in Los Angeles, California The first African-American to conduct a major symphony orchestra [...]

Two of the top searches that drove internet surfers to the Salon97 site in the past couple weeks included the following: “classical music” and “what is so great about it.” I was pretty surprised to see this, but I also saw this as a great opportunity to make a top 10 list of things that [...]