A Minute with Miles

Miles Hoffman
  • 5.0 (6)
  • MUSIC

Illuminating 60-second flights through the world of classical music with host and longtime NPR commentator Miles Hoffman. Produced by South Carolina Public Radio.You can enjoy an archive of these segments here.

  1. 08/18/2023

    Joanna Mauer: wisdom vs. age

    One of the wonderful aspects of life as a musician: age differences among players don’t mean anything. What counts is what kind of person you are, and how you make music.

    1 min

  2. 08/17/2023

    IPA

    Professional opera singers often have to sing in languages with which they’re completely unfamiliar. And yet they’re expected to pronounce all the words correctly. How do they do it?

    1 min

  3. 08/16/2023

    Interpretations vs. the music itself

    Like it or not, performers can’t help evaluating performance, especially in the cases of pieces we know or instruments we play.

    1 min

  4. 08/15/2023

    Text-based music

    It’s often easier to say what classical music is not, than to say what it is.

    1 min

  5. 08/14/2023

    Brass quintet

    Most of what brass players do is done with the lips, and it’s invisible to us.

    1 min

  6. 08/11/2023

    Bad chairs

    Chairs that are too low, too high, too hard, too slippery, or with seats tilted backward… they’re the bane of musicians’ existence.

    1 min

  7. 08/10/2023

    Why should somebody else...

    Why should somebody else—anybody else, whether it’s a program annotator or a radio announcer—tell me that a piece of music is “sad,” or happy, or light, or charming, or profound, when no two people ever have precisely the same reaction to the same piece? One person’s “sad” may be another’s “noble,” and one person’s intense and penetrating may be another’s pretentious and annoying.

    1 min

  8. 08/09/2023

    The bad old days

    In the bad old days of symphony orchestras in this country, music directors were absolute dictators, and orchestra musicians had few protections. If a music director woke up in a bad mood and decided to fire an orchestra musician on the spot, he could… never mind that it might instantly deprive that musician of his livelihood.

    1 min
See All (21)

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Illuminating 60-second flights through the world of classical music with host and longtime NPR commentator Miles Hoffman. Produced by South Carolina Public Radio.You can enjoy an archive of these segments here.

Information

  • Creator
    Miles Hoffman
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2023
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 SC ETV Commission
  • Show Website
    A Minute with Miles