Mjsbigblog — Glee star, Darren Criss is in New York City to begin rehearsals for a 3 week stint in the Broadway musical, How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Over the weekend, he performed two benefit shows. One for The Trevor Project/Elizabeth Gla... more info

411 Mania — Britney Spears and Beethoven... more info

Guardian Music — Fiona Maddocks and Nicholas Kenyon choose a selection of classical CDs that were overlooked this yearShostakovich: Songs for the FrontSoloists of the Russkaya Conservatoria Chamber Capella (Toccata)During the siege of Leningrad (1941-44), Shostakovic... more info

Guardian Music — On Monday 19 December, the Guardian is live streaming the Aurora orchestra's performance of Mozart's Requiem, featuring the choir of King's College, Cambridge, from Kings Place in London. Here's why the mysteries of Mozart's final piece are richer an... more info

Guardian Music — Royal Festival Hall, LondonRenée Fleming and Christoph Eschenbach have become well-established, if occasionally controversial interpreters of Strauss's Four Last Songs over the years. They recorded them together in 1995 and then went on to give a pe... more info

Guardian Music — Barbican Hall, LondonWhenever Colin Davis conducts, which, in his 80s, he now sits down to do, the effect is serene. Though Davis has never been strictly metronomic in his approach, there's a palpable sense of direction. This elusive quality, which D... more info

Guardian Music — A Georgetown professor was ridiculed for teaching a course on Jay-Z, but modern culture without hip-hop is unimaginableJudging by the amount of fuss he caused, one would think Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson had floated the idea of... more info

Guardian Music — Wigmore Hall, LondonChamber ensembles often find it much harder to establish themselves in the public pantheon of modern star performers than more easily marketable soloists, singers and conductors do. Why this should be is a question that deserves m... more info

Guardian Music — Amazing orchestras, opera premieres and Wagner in a Cornish church stay in the mindThis year's riots and protests to some degree penetrated the usually self-contained world of music. When word spread that the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra would play ... more info

Guardian Music — Barbican, LondonSir Colin Davis's ongoing exploration of the six symphonies of Carl Nielsen with the London Symphony Orchestra is not presented in numerical order; it was the second that provided the climax of this penultimate programme in their Barb... more info