Performance Today

You'd meet the staff, and this is when it was in Washington, and then Fred Child would be there as well and then the second week would be the show oh

this was when performance today performance today yeah you were on

performance it was through performance today and you were on you were live on the air for about an hour i think every day so yeah the first week was sort of like tech prep and all this kind of thing i remember a whiteboard and this kind of stuff and they were trying to find some kind of story But I didn't really have a very interesting backstory so they had me make one of my ping pong ball nails on the air and they put some kind of funny cartoon music behind it.

ping pong ball nails?

Yeah, my thumbnail is always a ping pong ball that's crazy glued to my thumb.

Matthew Sigman is an award-winning writer and editor and a three-time recipient of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music journalism.

His writing has appeared in publications including Symphony, Opera News, and American Theater, and on NPR's Performance Today.

But his newest book tells a much more personal story.

Matthew shared 18 years with his beloved do- 18 years, wow, beloved dog, Augie.

You're listening to WVIK Classical on 98.3 FM, W252EM Davenport, and 90.3 HD2 WVIK Rock Island.

[classical music] American composer Valerie Coleman is the founding flutist of the Grammy-nominated woodwind quintet Imani Winds and was Performance Today's 2020 Classical Woman of the Year.

In 2001, she explored the first of seven core principles of Kwanzaa called Umoja, the Swahili word for unity.

The work became Umoja: Anthem of Unity, which she first recorded with the Imani Winds.

They, they do local news sev- seven days a week.

In fact, they, they, they scrapped, uh, Performance Today, which is the classical music, but then the, the, uh, classical music station picked it up.

Of course, now they, the, the, the difference, KUM, which of course, uh, they, they all do Morning Edition from 5:00 to 9:00 and, and ATC and Marketplace and, a- and this other stuff.

But they, they, they enlarged their, their, their news department and then-

Um, no.

No.

They, they, they actually, the, the, the, the only one they, they run from Minnesota is, is, is Performance Today.

Other than that, they-