Home
Categories
EXPLORE
True Crime
Comedy
Society & Culture
Business
Sports
Health & Fitness
Technology
About Us
Contact Us
Copyright
© 2024 PodJoint
Loading...
0:00 / 0:00
Podjoint Logo
US
Sign in

or

Don't have an account?
Sign up
Forgot password
https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts221/v4/65/2c/95/652c9545-4477-7e2a-dc25-27217c396f6d/mza_377225060395482803.jpg/600x600bb.jpg
Strings Stories
Strings Magazine
24 episodes
6 months ago
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the May-June 2025 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author. It is an impassioned voice. A raised female voice. “Human life, for us, is sacred,” she says. Music swells beneath her. Bittersweet. Soaring. Rushing in and then retreating. She goes on. “For as we say, if any life is to be sacrificed, it shall be ours.” Orchestral crescendos punctuate her phrases, diminishing on a dime as her voice turns to soprano gravel from shouting. “They’l...
Show more...
Performing Arts
Arts,
Music,
Music Commentary,
Music History
RSS
All content for Strings Stories is the property of Strings Magazine and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the May-June 2025 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author. It is an impassioned voice. A raised female voice. “Human life, for us, is sacred,” she says. Music swells beneath her. Bittersweet. Soaring. Rushing in and then retreating. She goes on. “For as we say, if any life is to be sacrificed, it shall be ours.” Orchestral crescendos punctuate her phrases, diminishing on a dime as her voice turns to soprano gravel from shouting. “They’l...
Show more...
Performing Arts
Arts,
Music,
Music Commentary,
Music History
Episodes (20/24)
Strings Stories
On 'Women' Violinist Esther Abrami Lends Her Voice to a Varied Cast of Underrepresented Composers
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the May-June 2025 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author. It is an impassioned voice. A raised female voice. “Human life, for us, is sacred,” she says. Music swells beneath her. Bittersweet. Soaring. Rushing in and then retreating. She goes on. “For as we say, if any life is to be sacrificed, it shall be ours.” Orchestral crescendos punctuate her phrases, diminishing on a dime as her voice turns to soprano gravel from shouting. “They’l...
Show more...
6 months ago
15 minutes

Strings Stories
Thumb Position: A Path Toward Mastering a Dreaded Cello Technique
This story was written by Emily Wright for the March-April 2025 issue of Strings magazine and is read by editor Megan Westberg. There’s an old Monty Python skit where a husband and wife are discussing what could be scraped together for dessert after a horrendous dinner. The wife begins listing the options: rat cake, rat sorbet, rat pudding, and strawberry tart. The husband is suspicious of the innocent-sounding option, and after a beat, his wife admits there is some rat in the tart... S...
Show more...
7 months ago
9 minutes

Strings Stories
Cellist and Composer Peter Gregson Creates an Eponymous Album with a Presence
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the March-April 2025 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author. Sometime around the year 2000, violinist David Harrington of the California-based Kronos Quartet received an email. Its author wasn’t a colleague or a publicist. Or even an adult. This email was, in fact, written by a teenage cellist living roughly 5,000 miles away... Support the show
Show more...
7 months ago
11 minutes

Strings Stories
Multidimensional Imagination: Cellist Abel Selaocoe Continues to Redefine His Approach to the Instrument
This article was written by Thomas May for the March-April 2025 issue of Strings magazine and is read by editor Megan Westberg. “Music is embedded in everything we do in South African life,” says Selaocoe. “Not even only as an artist, but as a member of the public, being able to express yourself musically through the voice or dance has been such an integral part of my growing up.” Support the show
Show more...
7 months ago
13 minutes

Strings Stories
A Look Inside March-April 2025
Editor Megan Westberg shares highlights from the latest issue of Strings magazine. Get your copy of the March-April 2025 issue here. It's available in both print and digital editions. And, to be sure you never miss a new issue, why not subscribe? Strings Stories listeners get a special deal. Support the show Support the show
Show more...
7 months ago
2 minutes

Strings Stories
Sarah Neufeld, Richard Reed Parry & Rebecca Foon Improvise ‘First Sounds’—An Album 25 Years in the Making
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the January-February 2025 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author... Violinist Sarah Neufeld and cellist Rebecca Foon first met as teenagers at an Ani DiFranco concert. This seems a good place to start, as any discussion of their new album, First Sounds (Envision Records)—on which Neufeld and Foon combine talents with those of multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Parry—really has to start in the late ’90s, when this trio initially came to...
Show more...
8 months ago
12 minutes

Strings Stories
Violin Maker and Novelist Michael Kearns on His Influences, His Shop, and His Knack for Following His Nose Through Life - Strings Stories
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the January-February 2025 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author. It exists at a crossroads, violin making. Where living hands take on the work of those who abandoned their tools several centuries before. And from that perspective, it seems fair to say that all violin makers dwell in both the present and the past. That they must, in fact, because Stradivari still firmly guides their movements, peers over their shoulders... Suppor...
Show more...
8 months ago
14 minutes

Strings Stories
Ray Chen Finds His Purpose and Makes an Impact
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the September-October 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author.I get the sense that violinist Ray Chen is still searching for the right answer—the perfect, succinct media-ready response—to a particular question. Funny thing is, it isn’t a question I’ve asked him. In fact, outside the introductory pleasantries, I haven’t asked him anything at all. He’s calling from the airport in Chicago as he waits for a connecting flight to Los Ang...
Show more...
1 year ago
17 minutes

Strings Stories
Lindsey Stirling’s Most Recent Album Is All About the Fans
This story was written by David Templeton for the July-August 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by editor Megan Westberg. As a performer who often shares the statement, “We are magical creatures,” the notion of a Cirque du Soleil show built around her brand of inspirational pop grandeur—perhaps with actual magical creatures in it—seems like a bit of a no-brainer. “Right?” she says. “It has to happen.” Support the show
Show more...
1 year ago
10 minutes

Strings Stories
Fiddler Louise Bichan Releases Her Second Solo Recording, Almost a Decade in the Making
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the May-June 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author.It will have started before you notice it’s happening. You’ll hit play on fiddler Louise Bichan’s title track to her recent release, The Lost Summer (Adhyâropa Records), and you’ll suddenly realize you’re moving. In fact, you’ve been moving since Conor Hearn’s guitar and Bichan’s fiddle first lured you into the tune. The music seems a study in delight. A sparkling, clear-eyed ene...
Show more...
1 year ago
13 minutes

Strings Stories
Happy Camper: Violinist Philippe Quint Hits the Half-Century Mark
This story was written by David Templeton for the May-June 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by editor Megan Westberg.It’s shaping up to be a major milestone year for violinist Philippe Quint. The Russian-born musician turned 50 in March, right around the time he celebrated the 30th anniversary of his professional United States debut. More than 33 years after defecting to the United States from Leningrad, the two-time Grammy nominee has given hundreds of live performances and produce...
Show more...
1 year ago
13 minutes

Strings Stories
Earth Song: How Music Can Serve as a Response to the Climate Crisis
This story was written by Thomas May for the May-June 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by editor Megan Westberg.Nature sings in the work of countless composers in the Western classical tradition. The calls and flutterings of birds, spine-tingling thunder, falling raindrops: Vivaldi transformed a repertoire of found sounds from the natural world into some of the most memorable moments in The Four Seasons. But growing awareness that humanity’s relationship with nature has gone astray ...
Show more...
1 year ago
13 minutes

Strings Stories
Cellist Anastasia Kobekina Creates an Aural Slideshow of Her Trip to Italy on 'Venice'
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the March-April 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author.Venice isn’t a place easily rendered. It is a place where imagination and reality blend, and not always harmoniously, where the past and present sit side by side. And to a certain extent, Kobekina wanted to represent Venice as it is and was, but she wasn’t particularly interested in approaching that idea in a literal way. Support the show
Show more...
1 year ago
10 minutes

Strings Stories
The Music of Julia Perry Finds New Champions on the Centenary Celebration of Her Birth
This story was written by David Templeton for the March-April 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by Megan Westberg, Editor. “I would try to figure out which composer it was all on my own,” Grammy-nominated violinist-composer Curtis Stewart says, speaking from his apartment in New York. “But the real reason I would do that, close my ears when the DJ was talking, is that I’d realized, early on, that knowing ahead of time if I was listening to Tchaikovsky or Bach or whoever would c...
Show more...
1 year ago
11 minutes

Strings Stories
A Conductor Takes His Place in the (Sort Of) Family Business
This story was written by Scott Flavin for the March-April 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author.How important is your relationship with your grandparents? Has it influenced who you are or your life’s path? What if you hardly knew or never met them?Support the show
Show more...
1 year ago
4 minutes

Strings Stories
Warrior Energy: Electrifying Cellist Tina Guo Plays an Integral Role in ‘Dune’ and Other Scores by Hans Zimmer
This story was written by Greg Cahill for the March-April 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by editor Megan Westberg.“I love that film and soundtrack music aren’t limited by preconceptions or genres,” says cellist, composer, software developer, and entrepreneur Tina Guo, 38, whose extensive film work includes the 2022 Academy Award–winning soundtrack to Dune. “Anything goes, and experimentation or seeking to always do something new is so wonderful and so exhilarating—depending on the...
Show more...
1 year ago
12 minutes

Strings Stories
Siren Song: Composer Nathan Davis Reveals the Bowed Psaltery and All Its Many Possibilities
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the January-February 2024 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author.The first thing you have to understand about the bowed psaltery is that it takes the shape of a triangle. A rather acute isosceles triangle, in fact, strung elegantly with a minimum of 32 strings that sing with bright silvery voices...Support the show
Show more...
1 year ago
11 minutes

Strings Stories
Maddie Denton Honors Her Family’s Unique Fiddling Heritage
This story was written by Maddie Denton for the November-December 2023 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author."I’m excited about this tune because I think it’s danceable, which is ultimately my goal anytime I play a fiddle tune."In the latest submission to our popular On My Music Stand column, fiddler and recording artist Maddie Denton discusses "Jenna McGaugh."Support the show
Show more...
1 year ago
6 minutes

Strings Stories
Bach and Forth: Cellist Jan Vogler Plans a Collaborative Concert with Poet Amanda Gorman
This story was written by Megan Westberg and is read by the author. “I was, of course, like many people, struck by her eloquence, her incredible aura, and also by her poem,” says Vogler. “I started reading more of her poetry and also some articles she wrote, and then at some point, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t she be the most fantastic contemporary answer in poetry to Bach’s music?’”Support the show
Show more...
1 year ago
10 minutes

Strings Stories
Alexander Hersh’s ‘Absinthe’ Project Raises a Glass to the Verdant Spirit
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the November-December 2023 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author. From music to video production to marketing to merchandising, the Absinthe project has been a personal, local affair. “One of the goals of Absinthe is that I hope it will inspire other classical musicians to maybe think outside the box, take risks, do something creative that maybe you’re thinking of doing. It’s OK to combine interests. It doesn’t dilute you as a player ...
Show more...
1 year ago
15 minutes

Strings Stories
This story was written by Megan Westberg for the May-June 2025 issue of Strings magazine and is read by the author. It is an impassioned voice. A raised female voice. “Human life, for us, is sacred,” she says. Music swells beneath her. Bittersweet. Soaring. Rushing in and then retreating. She goes on. “For as we say, if any life is to be sacrificed, it shall be ours.” Orchestral crescendos punctuate her phrases, diminishing on a dime as her voice turns to soprano gravel from shouting. “They’l...