Since the 1980s, John Zorn has composed 500 songs inspired by traditional Jewish music, a series known as the Masada Book, variously recorded by adventurous musicians such as Marc Ribot and now Pat Metheny.

Police in New Orleans were searching for at least two gunmen after a dozen people were wounded when shots were fired at a Mother’s Day parade.

It was enough to make listeners think they were still dreaming: a live segue from a worthy discussion to a yodelling woman. But Sunday’s on-air glitches on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House were very real.

In Morton Feldman's lengthy 1979 piece "Violin and Orchestra", neither violin nor orchestra behaves as they do in the standard concerto format.

Ever since she made history by winning the BBC Musician of the Year contest at the age of twelve, Jennifer Pike has been setting a furious pace as a performer, while maintaining a healthy academic balance.

History rarely supplies plots for full-evening ballets, and with good reason. Dance tends to be strong on feeling, weak on facts. As George Balanchine once drolly observed, ballet has no way of saying “this is my mother-in-law”.

Daniel Harding will conduct a BBC Prom due to have been given by Sir Colin Davis who died last month aged 85.

In 2011, Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra played two BBC Proms in one night. The first was a meticulously disciplined programme of Liszt and Mahler, the second a jamboree of party pieces and encores, selected by raffle from a list of some 200 works. Encores are the great disinhibitors of classical music and they have served Fischer and his orchestra well. Now 30 years old, the BFO can melt the cognoscenti with musical kitsch, compete with the finest in core symphonic repertoire, and deliver Beethoven with the transparency of period instruments. Whether this should all be attempted in one performance is another matter.

The cadenza in a classical concerto is a curious thing. Originally devised as a way of letting the soloist show off, it became a commentary on the work it adorned, as well as a holiday from it: the soloist could take you on a switchback journey before bringing you safely home. These days, with so many other opportunities for display, its bravura function has faded, so soloists often use it instead as a slot to puff their own wares – as Kennedy does when he injects jazz and Gypsy music into his Brahms.

Conductor Sir Colin Davis has died at the age of 85, the London Symphony Orchestra has announced.

The Austrian label exil.arte is dedicated to unearthing lost works by forgotten composers deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis – in most cases, simply a synonym for “Jewish”.

75 years after Hitler annexed country, poll reveals worrying views about banned party

I've had the Regent Stradivarius since 2000, and it's just like having a child

The app, which aims to change to way we use email, is in high demand