What should we do when a piece of music offends a whole group of people?

Never program down to your audience, and never assume that your audience isn't ready to be challenged by fresh interpretations of familiar pieces, by works from the canon that unjustly have been ignored, by the music of today and tomorrow.

People came from across the country to celebrate the farewell concert of the Dale Warland Singers. What can we learn from a chorus that achieves the pinnacle of aristic acclaim when it decides to close its doors after 31 years—what is the cost of excellence and when is it time to say goodbye?

With his finger still firmly affixed on contemporary music's pulse, Minimalist composer Steve Reich, at age 68, creates rich, rhythmic universes of hypnotic sound. Recently hailed by the Village Voice as "America's greatest living composer," the New York-born maverick's works cover the gamut—from his early taped speeches in 1965 to his and video artist Beryl Korot's 2002 digital video opera, Three Tales.

Performances of Bach's Passions, particularly in light of the attention that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has received, present an opportunity for Christians and Jews to confront issues of religious intolerance, the role of the arts, and how the arts might, advertently or inadvertently, promote intolerance. We can use our role as musical leaders to engage in this important dialogue on religious intolerance.

It might be time to update and upgrade your own choral recording library. When the Voice asked today's classical music broadcast personalities, "What three or four choral recordings would you take to the ends of the earth with you, and why?" they came up with the following, sometimes surprising, favorites.

College a cappella pretty much started at Yale in 1909 with the Whiffenpoofs, a Glee Club spin-off quartet that sang regularly at Mory's Temple Bar, a campus restaurant. Now, a cappella singing has exploded, spreading to campuses all over the U.S. and abroad. Read about how this movement has taken off.