When British saxophonist Jess Gillam refers to her Carnegie Hall debut as "a real dream come true," she's being literal. Since the age of 12, she's dreamt of taking to New York City's fabled stage and sharing her passion for the saxophone with the audience.

Few careers in classical music read as illustriously as that of pianist Wu Han. For more than 50 years, her life has centered around the concert stage, delivering performances of the highest caliber in nearly every corner of the globe.

1983 proved a pivotal year in violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky's life. That was the year the Azerbaijan-born musician became a U.S. citizen, married his wife, and bought the Stradivarius violin he still plays to this day. It was also the year he discovered Glenn Gould's final recording of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations.

From dinosaurs dancing to The Rite of Spring in Disney's Fantasia to a tuxedoed Bugs Bunny performing Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody, classic cartoons have long been a delightful entry point for kids of all ages to get to know classical music.

That's a tradition composer and jazz pianist Joel Pierson is breathing new life into as artistic director of The Queen's Cartoonists. Working at the crossroads of classical music, jazz, and the golden age of animation, The Queen's Cartoonists perform the scores of classic animated films from around the world, perfectly synchronizing their brilliant jazz-band arrangements with the films projected on stage.

The Spanish pianist Javier Perianes is racking up quite a lot of frequent flyer miles these days.

This season alone, his concert schedule has him zigzagging the globe to perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Dallas Symphony here in the States, Europe's Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Oslo Philharmonic, and a whirlwind trip to Australia for concerts with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, among many other engagements.

In early 2012, the coloratura soprano Marie-Eve Munger received an offer every opera singer dreams of — a lead role in a Mozart opera.

But there was a catch. It wasn't a role in Don Giovanni, or The Marriage of Figaro, or any of the popular Mozart operas performed every season across the globe. The opera was Il sogno di Scipione, which Mozart wrote when he was just 16 years old.

For violinist Hilary Hahn, finding success as an international soloist has never been about sticking to the same menu of concertos by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Sibelius. Now in the fourth decade of her storied career, the three-time Grammy Award winner has consistently worked to expand the scope of the violin canon — commissioning a slate of new works from composers like Edgar Meyer, Jennifer Higdon, and Lera Auerbach.

Conductor Gary Thor Wedow has often found inspiration for his music-making in the visual arts. But a recent visit to an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave Wedow, a specialist in Baroque opera, an altogether new view of ancient Greek and Roman art — and early music.

Many classical music ensembles have only recently begun to prioritize programming works by underrepresented composers who've been unjustly lost to the sands of time. But for 20 years and counting, that's been the sole focus and mission of the ARC Ensemble and its artistic director, Simon Wynberg.

French-Canadian baritone Etienne Dupuis is a big fan of television, especially Ted Lasso. So much so that he's adapted a key phrase from the comedy-meets-philosophy series — "Football is life!" — as a mantra to stoke people's interest in opera.

The life of composer Robert Koch is a study in contrasts.

Raised in the same area of Germany as the Brothers Grimm — with its foggy forests and medieval castles — he now lives among the sunny splendor of Los Angeles. And although Koch leads a monk-like spiritual practice of yoga, meditation, and pranayama breathwork, he relies on digital technologies to produce the lush, atmospheric sounds of his electronic music.

Icelandic composer Gabríel Ólafs has become a poster child for the German term wunderkind. At age 14, he wrote the song that landed him his first record deal. At 19, he released his debut album, Absent Minded, which has been streamed millions of times.

The idea of preservation is on tenor Timothy Fallon's mind a lot lately. He recently bought a house in New England that dates to 1740 — which, he's quick to point out, means Bach was still alive when the house was built.

When most musicians join me to record the Classical Post podcast, they need a few minutes to settle in. This makes sense — whether they're an instrumentalist, singer, or composer, they're used to communicating through a medium outside of their speaking voice. So it can take some time to shake off the nerves.

But the moment I sat down with pianist Klaudia Kudełko to discuss her stunning debut album, Time, she was fired up and ready to dive into her personal artistic mission: to connect people with classical music.

With composition titles like In the Cause of the Free, Ellis Island: The Dream of America, and Balance of Power, it's easy to tell Peter Boyer has more than a casual interest in American history. In fact, it's something that's inspired him throughout his career.

The cover art for most classical albums usually relies on a glamorous studio shot of the artist or a generically tranquil landscape that hardly relates to the music we're about to experience.

But that's not at all the case on the cover of The Strange Highway, the debut album from composer Gity Razaz. A pencil and ink drawing depicting a cloaked figure with an arrow through the heart, whose head is a series of celestial orbs and auras, this artwork from Daniel Martin Diaz not only draws us in — it perfectly captures Razaz's sound world, one inspired by the Surrealism art movement of the early 20th century.  

The savviest arts administrators know that putting a concert season together is more than programming popular repertoire or bringing big-name soloists to town. For Jeremy Geffen, executive and artistic director of Cal Performances at UC Berkeley, bringing to life all of the organization's artistic and educational activities — about 80 events per season — centers around ideas of building and serving communities across the Bay Area.

Some classical musicians choose to follow a specific lane throughout their career, either as an orchestral musician, a chamber player, or a concert soloist. But Stewart Goodyear can't confine his career to one lane — he demands an entire highway.

Among the countless projects classical music presenters have had to delay over the past two years, perhaps none has been more eagerly anticipated than that of Omar, a new opera from Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels.

So much of the way classical musicians perform or even think about music is informed by the work of past generations. But what happens when history books omit certain musicians, often due to their gender, race, or sexuality? How can those gaps in music history — and our shared musical legacy — be restored?