Great Performances: Now Hear This

Scott Yoo and his wife Alice Dade, a leading flutist, travel to Buenos Aires to discover the music of Astor Piazzolla, who fell in love with tango. Then fell out of love. Then tango fell out of love with him. Scott and Alice play with Argentina’s greatest musicians and dancers, to find out if Piazzolla and tango could ever reconcile.

Many composers have struggled with mental health problems, few more famously than Robert Schumann. Scott goes to Scotland, Germany and France, with cellist Bion Tsang, psychiatrist and pianist Dr. Richard Kogan and other fascinating musicians and scholars, to understand the connection between mental health and creativity in the work of Schumann and other great artists.

Scott Yoo follows composer, steel pan virtuoso and video artist Andy Akiho through New York, to figure out how this musical visionary has combined Caribbean, Asian and jazz influences to become one of the most in-demand composers today.

Like Scarlatti before him, Isaac Albeniz was a keyboard composer captivated by Spain. Scott Yoo travels with guitarist Manuel Barrueco and pianist Juan Perez Floristan through the great Spanish cities of Andalusia, to see how Albeniz captured their culture, history and sounds in a brilliant series of musical portraits, his most celebrated works.