Fishko Files

In 1999, there were numerous celebrations of the composer Frederic Chopin, who had died 150 years earlier in 1849.  WNYC's Sara Fishko took the moment to ponder, in this archival edition of Fishko Files, the question of what Chopin actually did for music.

Music Minus One became an institution after WWII in a different America.  In this Fishko files WNYC’s Sara Fishko explored MMO’s product ---music minus the solo instrument (“your cello here…”)—during its half-century celebration.  

As the current production of the Brecht-Kurt Weill “Threepenny Opera” continues at the Atlantic Theater Company, we offer this Fishko Files on Lotte Lenya (Weill’s wife and muse) and the many ways to sing Weill’s music.  

It was right around this time seventy five years ago –as spring was finally kicking in—that workers were putting the finishing touches on the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens.  As WNYC’s Sara Fishko tells us in this Fishko Files, its theme, “The World of Tomorrow,” held special promise for Depression-era Americans…

More than 90 years ago, the music world was changed by a remarkable musical instrument that still seems new. WNYC's Sara Fishko tells us about an electronic marvel that has its own sound, and its own bizarre story. Here's the next Fishko Files...

A three day mini-film festival, “The Music of Morricone,” begins tonight at BAM.  The superstar film-composer Ennio Morricone is noted for mixing all kinds of sounds into his scores, including whistling--- which, As WNYC’s Sara Fishko tells us, has its own, colorful history.  Here is this Fishko Files.

The composer Arnold Schoenberg, father of the twelve tone system, scandalized the music world in 1913 Vienna -- and became the go-to music teacher for innumerable American composers after he moved to the US in 1934.  How can we understand his music?  WNYC’s Sara Fishko gives it a try in this Fishko Files.  

Angela Hewitt will be in New York next week to give a master class in the performance of music by Bach.  As WNYC’s Sara Fishko tells us, Bach’s keyboard music has been especially appealing to pianists with a strong point of view.  Here is this Fishko Files…

Film director William Wyler had a soft spot for a good story.  The result, says WNYC’s Sara Fishko in this edition of Fishko Files, was a catalogue of films –many of them great-- that didn’t necessarily look like the work of a single “auteur.” 

Fishko Files on the rise and fall of the innovative wide-screen film format Cinerama, which, as WNYC's Sara Fishko tells us, delighted viewers and gave the post-WWII film business a much-needed jolt.