Classics Live brings you exclusive performances from throughout the KPR listening area. Our microphones travel to the Sunflower Music Festival, the Lied Center, the Ruel Joyce Recital series, the Great Spaces Music and Arts series, as well as performances recorded in Kansas Public Radio's live studio. Performers include the Emerson String Quartet, the Zoco Duo, Ensemble Iberica, and members of the Kansas City Symphony, among others. The series producer is KPR's Cordelia Brown, with recording engineer Chuck Smith. Darrell Brogdon hosts the program. Thursdays at 7 p.m. 

December 11 2025  Classics Live 238:  Vince Gnojek, Classical Sax. This Doreen Maronde Recital from JCCC features recently retired KU Saxophone Professor Vince Gnojek at his best. News music for sax(es) and piano, assisted by KU’s Director of Collaborative Piano, Ellen Sommer.

December 18 2025  Classics Live Present KU Vespers 2025. Not quite the whole incredible Holiday Vespers KU Music Students’ season’s extravaganza, but Darrell Brogdon brings you an hour’s worth of music celebration from The KU School of Music’s choirs, soloists, orchestras, and bands.

December 25 2025  Classics Live Christmas 2025. Have Classics Live and KPR on Christmas Day at 7pm so you’ll never forget the reason for the season. After Cordelia and Chuck put this together they were both in a holiday glow for days. One glorious song after another from the Lawrence Civic Choir’s 2024 show at FUMC in downtown Lawrence, which is home to the biggest pipe organ in the state of Kansas! This one’s a keeper. Steve Eubank and the LCC really outdid themselves with this one.

January 1 2026  Classics Live 239:  Sunflower Music Festival 2025 II: Start the new year off right with a sweet summer evening of chamber music played by members of the 2025 Sunflower Music Festival. Including the complete Samuel Barber quartet which features that profound slow movement known as the Adagio for Strings. They begin with Debussy’s gossamer Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp.

January 8 2026  Classics Live 240:  The Savages are Back! Karen and Jeffrey Savage both shine in their 88 SQUARED Piano Duo. Face to face onstage in JCCC’s Polsky Theater, the two 9-foot grand pianos were arranged in the ying/yang shape for an hour of piano duets and solos, including a really fresh arrangement of not only Somewhere Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz, but a “Wizard of Oz Fantasy” that has every little tune you’ll recognize from the film, like Schumann’s “The Happy Farmer” and themes for the flying monkeys.

January 15 2026:  Classics Live 241 Sunflower Music Festival 2025 III: The most charming night of SMF 2025 was “Harp Night.” Festival favorite, harpist Rita Costanzi stars with other ensemble players for harp and viola dances, harp arrangements of tunes by Donizetti, St Saens and Liszt, finishing up with the stunning Ravel Introduction and Allegro.

January 22 2026  Classics Live 242:  The Romm Trio. Maybe you haven’t heard the combination of French Horn, trumpet and piano. The Romm Trio starts off with a Jubilation based on a Bach Prelude. There are contemporary pieces like the FanTANGO by Kevin McKee as well as some other rarely-heard pieces written for this unusual combo.

January 29 2026  Classics Live 243:  Sunflower Music Festival 2025 IV. Honor Kansas Day by reliving this prairie night of chamber music in Topeka featuring quintets by Prokofiev and Onslow.

February 5 2026 Classics Live 244:  Trio Lawrence This local ensemble of flute, viola and harp debuted on KPR’s 2019 Live Day. They’ve just released a new album called Fujin’s Dream, named after a Japanese god of wind. KU music teachers Daniel Velasco, Boris Vayner and Erin Wood bring you ‘Til Human Voices Wake Us by Donald Davis, and Ingrid Stolzel’s The Voice of the Rain and other pieces.

February 12 2026  Classics Live 245:  Sunflower Music Festival 2025 V This summer Sunflower was able to get one of the world’s best conductors to come spend a couple of weeks in Topeka Kansas! Maestro JoAnn Falletta was a real favorite with musicians and the audience as she took them through Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.

February 19 2026  Classics Live 246:  Dr Lucy Tan, Pianist Lucy Tan, the beloved piano teacher from Washburn University’s music department, gave a great solo recital in the Midwest Trust Center for the Performing Arts recently. Look forward to a late Beethoven piano sonata, and a very colorful and full of characters suite of sketches by Robert Schumann called Kreisleriana.

February 26 2026  Classics Live 247:  Sunflower Music Festival 2025 VI: Another summer evening of chamber music played by professional soloists who come to Topeka from all over the world. Valerie Coleman’s Gypsy flair called Tzigane for Woodwind Quintet. Plus a Tango Ballet for String Quartet by Astor Piazzolla.

March 5 2026  Classics Live 248:  The Goldenberg Duo Now in their 46th year of bringing storytelling between their classical pieces for violin and piano, this brother-sister duo of Susan Goldenberg and William Goldenberg always bring extra special meaning to their pieces. Debussy, Frank Bridge, Amy Beach and more.

March 12 2026  Classics Live 249:  Sunflower Music Festival 2025 The festival finale! JoAnn Falletta returns to take the chamber orchestra through Mozart’s sunny 29th Symphony, a Haydn concerto featuring oboe, bassoon, violin and cello solos, the St Paul’s Suite, and a very moving, very flowing piece by Max Bruch which honors the Jewish reckoning of Yom Kippur in a piece called Kol Nidrei.

March 19 2025  Classics Live 250  A Baroque Celebration:  The Genius of Georg Philip Telemann A perfect conclusion to this round of new Classics Live shows, our weekly celebration of the best in live local classical music concerts so we can record them and share them with a wider audience. This one’s a Telemann party with soprano Eva Peng, harpsichordist Anthony Olsen and friends for cantata music, a trio sonata, two solo keyboard pieces and more.