A weekly, one-hour show. Created and hosted by Gilbert Kaplan, Mad About Music’s format is part interview, part musical performance. Internationally famous guests select five key musical works and discuss why those pieces are important to them. The interviews are always personal–and often humorous—as some of the world’s most famous people reveal aspects of their personalities largely unknown to the public. The guest list for the show features 52 outstanding personalities including Jimmy Carter; Bill Keller, Editor, New York Times; Condoleezza Rice; Glenn Lowry, Director, Museum of Modern Art; conductor Valery Gergiev; Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; Renée Fleming; NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw; Patrick Stewart; Clive Gillinson, Executive and Artistic Director, Carnegie Hall
Broadcast date: April 24, 2014
Former Secretary of State CONDOLEEZZA RICE on President Bush and music
The President and I don’t have the same musical tastes, I’m afraid. He does love music. I like Country-Western too, which is what he likes very, very much. But he knows that it’s very important to me and he even asks me once in a while, well, are you playing the piano, because he knows it’s a very centering experience for me.
Broadcast date: May 1, 2014
Sex Therapist DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER on sex and music
I don’t like music background -- not during sex or not during talking about sex. I want everybody to concentrate on the lovemaking. It also permits fantasies to be developed if you don’t have background music.
Broadcast date: May 8, 2014
Editor of the Financial Times, LIONEL BARBER on how music can make him cry
If you’re a journalist you need to have a fairly hard-nosed, hard-headed view of the world. But, I would say, sometimes Mozart, sometimes an opera like Tosca at the end, probably Callas - Maria Callas could bring me to tears.
Broadcast date: May 15, 2014
Fashion Designer ISAAC MIZRAHI meets a psychic
I grew up playing Mozart very easily. Like if the piano teacher would give a lesson of Mozart, like falling off a log, I would just play it. Once, in LA, I was having this psychic reading and he said, “Oh, you play the piano. Is that right?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Who taught you to play the piano?” I said, “Well, I had a teacher.” “No, no, no, here’s who taught you how to play the piano. Mozart taught you how to play. He was in love with you.”
Broadcast date: May 22, 2014
NBC News personality TOM BROKAW on music for his funeral
There’s a song that I suspect I would like to have played at my funeral and it’s called Shenandoah. It’s the tale of a man who pines for the daughter of Shenandoah, who was a famous Iowa chief. That song speaks to me about where I come from, about the Missouri River especially – I was raised on it, and about the Great Plains.
Broadcast date: May 29, 2014
Soprano RENÉE FLEMING on audiences that boo
Booing is kind of a way of life in certain theaters and in certain houses, and singers can also develop a thick skin, just as we may have to develop a thick skin in regards to reviews. Another thing that has always amazed me is if you go to a baseball game, the insults and the screaming and yelling that comes from the gallery, even from fans. I always think, gosh, these guys, how do they just – do they ignore it? How does this just roll off their backs? So, it really depends on what’s normal for any given theater or any given sport, you know. Opera has been called a “blood sport” as well.
Broadcast date: June 5, 2014
Former Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, on playing Schubert’s slow movements
I can play the right hand of a lot of, let’s say, slow pieces of music. And one of the great moments of solace for me at the end of a long day, I sit at the piano and I just play for myself the slow movements of Schubert. So, this to me is music, in which I have a direct participation and really goes deep into the soul.
Broadcast date: June 12, 2014
New York Times Crossword Puzzle Editor WILL SHORTZ on Opera in the Puzzles
The most popular one is Aida: its four letters, three of which are vowels. There’s an on-line database of words and names that show up in crosswords and Aida is the most popular opera there: it showed up in the database 121 times. The next most popular was Tosca at 58; Otello at 29; and you know, more familiar operas like Fidelio shows up only seven times, and La Traviata, which everyone knows, didn’t show up at all.
Broadcast date: June 19, 2014
Supreme Court Justice ANTONIN SCALIA on music to play while writing opinions
The best is Bach. It doesn’t intrude and it’s very orderly. I truly believe it. It sets your mind in order and I think some other music disorders your mind, confuses it.
Broadcast date: June 26, 2014
Actor PATRICK STEWART on Elgar and 9/11
I just wanted to stay with the feelings of that extraordinary last movement it induced. And after a time, 15 minutes or so, I flipped on the radio to hear the very end of a news broadcast about the tragedy and disaster at the World Trade Center. Those things have become so interconnected, the Elgar and the feelings that I experienced that day, and in some way, the emotion, the compassion, and the intensity of the disturbance, that is so redolent in Elgar’s great work, will live with me for all time, associated with that terrible day.