Professor Elaine Sisman has been a teacher, a role model, a mentor, and a friend to me. As an undergraduate in her music history classes at Columbia, I admired her ability to speak articulately about music as much as I admired her ability to exude quiet elegance in everything she did. A few of her lectures will stay with me forever, but one in particular exploded my world, revealing to me indispensable ways of approaching music. The topic was Chopin's Fourth Ballade, the f minor, which was a work that I knew but had not performed at the time. Her visible excitement, her analytical insight made this Ballade one of the most gripping stories I had ever heard. Soon after, I started to perform the Ballade, and more than a decade later it remains one of my favorite pieces to play — it seems to yield endless layers of creativity-at-work, even after dozens of performances, and I know that I owe my ability to peel some of those layers to Elaine's vision. I had been trying to figure out how to use Elaine's talents on the air with Dial-a-Musician for some time when we got the question about musicologists. I was delighted to finally have a chance to show off her abilities. This DaM was one of the first times we could incorporate so many musical examples into the body of the interview, thanks to the skills of my wonderful producer, Lauralyn Hogan. It was a perfect opportunity to explore just how much we could accomplish in under five minutes!

I have been lucky enough to get to hear Christine Brewer sing in person numerous times, and even to be at the keyboard playing with her. She is a true Artist, with a capital 'A' and no 'e' at the end. She is honest and down-to-earth while having impeccable taste and technique, and of course a stunning voice. She also has an amazingly alive sense of humor. Christine's recordings of Strauss songs with Roger Vignoles is one I listen to over and over again. She has an ease of phrasing, along with a deeply felt understanding of meaning, which together convey so much. I was honored to get to play some of these for the first time with her in St Louis. It was an added bonus that my page turner that evening was Manny Ax, who has known me for about twenty years but who was hearing me play for the first time that night! Christine is such a natural singer - the notes just seem to flow right out of her body. When I heard the listener question about how singers manage to look comfortable on stage, I knew her response would be revealing. I have never seen anyone quite so at ease with her body as Christine is when she sings. As it happens, Christine is also one of the nicest people in the world, so coordinating schedules with her was almost as much fun as the interview itself.

Nancy Allen's name is one I don't remember not knowing. Not only is she a fixture at the Aspen Music School and at the Juilliard School, at both of which I was a student from 1983-1993, but also she is now the principal harpist of the New York Philharmonic, my hometown band. When I first conceived of the premise of Dial-a-Musician, the sample question that came to mind was, "Why does a harp have so many pedals?" When I was four years old, what I really wanted to play was the harp, so I think I've held this question in for a long time. By the time I started working in radio, I already knew the answer, but it still fascinated me. When I pitched Dial-a-Musician to the folks at Classical Public Radio Network, I used this question as an example, and explained hypothetically how somebody as musically gifted and verbally talented as Nancy Allen would answer this on the air. I envisioned illustrative musical examples and a level of articulateness they must have thought I was crazy to expect. When we finally coordinated schedules with Nancy to get her on the air, I was actually giddy. It was like a vision being fulfilled. We started the interview and right away I knew it was going to be one of our best. Her examples and her descriptions were beyond even what I had hoped for, and her own obvious enthusiasm for sharing her instrument infected all of us who were listening in the studio. I can't wait for our next harp-related question!

Bruce is someone I've known for much of my life. When I attended Juilliard's Pre-College Division, after a certain number of years they put us in the "Advanced" Theory class, where we stayed until we graduated from High School. Some students were there for one year, others for five or six, depending on their age and training when they entered the school. This meant that the class was made up of many hotshots, but all with varying levels of experience and knowledge. Some kids knew so much, I bet I would still find them intimidating! Who to handle such a motley crew? Bruce Adolphe, of course. He managed to challenge even the masters while engaging all of us and teaching us endless amounts about music and its theory. His class was one I looked forward to even in the fourth or fifth year (who remembers?) that I took it. Mr. Adolphe (as I am still wont to call him) was intelligent, clever, insightful, thought-provoking, and, probably most importantly, very, very funny! Over the years, I've gotten to know Bruce as a composer as well, and as a radio personality from NPR's Piano Puzzlers. Since his talent has so many facets, I knew he'd be a natural for our listener question about keys. The teacher, the composer, the theorist, and the radio voice all came together for one of my favorite Dial-a-Musicians.