Jeremy Reynolds

The least secret thing about today’s pop music is that much of it uses the same simple four chords in a loop. Probably the most popular demonstration...

When opera was the prevailing art form of the day, composers and librettists would sally forth to do battle with their pens, writing music on spec in hopes...

Great characters deserve great brass stings. Take Roxie from the Broadway musical “Chicago,” the slinky, sly femme fatale who murders her lover...

What’s the difference between a Broadway show and an orchestra concert? It’s more of a utilitarian question than an aesthetic one. Broadway...

Violinists were once the rock stars of the music world, with the likes of Paganini — rumored to have sold his soul to the devil for his talent —...

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra spends about 10 hours in rehearsal preparing for a classical concert that averages about 90 minutes of music.  That’s...

Imagine a war in which no blood was spilled. No, not the Cold War — I’m talking about the aesthetic War of the Romantics, in which ego and...

Captain Hook spent a sweltering day at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden posing and sneering at a camera in front of the conservatory’s pirate ship, shooting footage for a commercial to promote Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s October performances of “Peter Pan.”  

There’s something magical about grand old opera, sort of like a dusty bottle of top-shelf Italian wine. Some of these older works, many of them more...

Let’s put aside snobbery — of course you don’t need to understand a work of art’s form to appreciate it. However. In my experience,...