KPAC's summer intern, Abraham Gomez, attended a concert last week by the Cactus Pear Music Festival. How electrifying can classical music be? "Very!" he says.

TPR's Nathan Cone loves movies... and of course movie music! He shares this appreciation of soundtrack label Intrada Records' founder Douglass Fake, who passed away on July 13.

TPR's Nathan Cone has been spinning these three albums in his player, and finds much to enjoy, especially on Agustin Muriago's album of Argentinian composers, featuring an opening track that lives up to its English-language translation... 'to begin flying.'

Troy Peters, the Musical Director of YOSA (Youth Orchestras of San Antonio), recently returned from Germany where 60 students enjoyed performing for audiences in three cities. "I want [them] to enter adulthood hoping and wishing that their futures be boundless, because they're going to go further."

We continue our exploration of the sonata with two teens from Southern California. We hear a bassoonist performing Saint Saëns and a pianist performing an exciting work by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. Finally, we are treated to a flashback finale of an outstanding flutist playing Dorff's Salmon Lake.

"When I actually visited the cemetery where the greatest composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms and Strauss [were buried]...it was an unbelievably touching moment," says Dr. Yoojin Muhn, Musical Director of the Mastersingers. Learn more about their recent European tour, and how you can get involved with the choir.

We hear a range of sonatas including Bach performed on marimba, a late Beethoven work for cello and piano, and a Brahms viola sonata. Performed by teens from Arizona and Texas!

It's Black Music month! This week, Host Brittany Luse invites Howard University professor and trombonist Myles Blakemore to talk about how classical music influenced some of our favorite musicians. They look at how the counterpoint technique of Johann Sebastian Bach may have inspired Nina Simone, and how a love of Ginuwine can turn into a career in classical music. Want to be featured on IBAM? Record a voice memo responding to Brittany's question at the end of the episode and send it to ibam@npr.org.

On this edition of From the Top, a 17-year-old violist performs a moving Brahms Sonata with guest host Orli Shaham and we meet a talented teenage pianist who plays one of Liszt's great works for piano.

The name of the great contralto and civil rights icon now lives above the doors to the grand hall in Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.