'Music Always Serves a Purpose' - From motif to structure: using five to ten emotional adjectives, exploring ideas at the piano, and sketching a timeline for a piece’s intensity and climax. - How improvisation can reveal unexpected directions, and how the piano helps test harmonies and musical colors. - The First of Everything: lyricism, soaring melodies, and touches of minimalism. - Why concert works, streaming albums, and film scores call for different priorities—from the musicians playing a piece to the characters on screen. - How a move to Los Angeles during the writers’ strike led to a social media series transforming strangers’ hummed melodies into compositions. - Clarity and service in composition: helping listeners feel the music and remember even three to five notes.

'Simple, Beautiful Pieces' Steinway Artist and composer Jeff Beal discusses writing for solo piano.

'This Is How It Should Be' Duke Ellington’s granddaughter, Mercedes Ellington, is a choreographer and dancer as well as the founder, CEO and Artistic Director of The Duke Ellington Center for the Arts in New York City. She joins us to talk about the enduring music of her grandfather and her own journey as an artist.

'The Search That Will Never Stop' Pianist Alexandre Kantorow discusses his musical family, piano as orchestra, what to practice, creating a recital program, and what he's learned so far.

'You Can't Find Freedom Unless You Have Structure' Steinway Artist Sullivan Fortner joins Soundboard to discuss coming up in jazz, ancient practices, the greats, urgency, and showing up to battle with a plan.

Reflections on Van Cliburn, on the Seventeenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and on the legacy of classical music in America.

‘An Element of Storytelling’ Jazz pianist and Steinway Artist Kris Davis takes us through her process, her love of Herbie Hancock, and what she gained from listening to other instruments.

‘When I perform a piece, I‘m co-composing.’ Chopin International Piano Competition winner and Steinway Artist Yulianna Avdeeva discusses her most recent recording project for Pentatone: Dmitri Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87.

‘You Can Just Make Stuff’ The songwriter Sunny War talks about her eclectic influences, when less is more, her Americana dream, and taking inspiration from her racist neighbors.

‘Primordial’ Ambient and electronic music composer Steve Roach discusses his musical philosophy and process.

‘I Want To Honor Their Voices’ Guitarist Nels Cline talks about having no fixed voice, Wilco, pretension, and going down with the set list.