LIBERTY, Free to Be You and Me 

Classical Americana explores how music reflects “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. This week: music that lets us define, redefine and transform ourselves, from William Dawson, Christopher Tin, Lou Harrison, and more. 

LIBERTY, America To Me  Classical Americana explores how music reflects “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. This week: we examine the freedoms of thought and speech, and their powerful reflections in American music. 

LIBERTY, I Believe In Liberty

Classical Americana explores how music reflects “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. This week: music inspired by the pursuit of liberty from Margaret Bonds, Duke Ellington, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and more. 

LIFE: Youth, Day, Old Age and Night

Classical Americana explores how music reflects “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. This week, we journey along life's winding paths, listening to its ups and downs with music by Leonard Bernstein, Philip Lasser, and George Walker.

LIFE, The Promise of Living

Classical Americana explores how music reflects “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. This week: growing pains. The struggles of our youth are an inescapable part of Life. But music has the magical ability to turn all the angst and anguish into something beautiful. Come of age, musically speaking, with help from composers like Jake Heggie, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber and Oscar Levant.

LIFE, Scenes from Childhood 

This season on Classical Americana, as the Declaration of Independence nears 250 years old, we’re exploring how music reflects those most American of values: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This week, host Lara Downes starts at the very beginning with an hour of music that captures the spirit of childhood, from a lullaby by Florence Price to Chick Correa’s Children’s Songs, and more.