Kevin Puts Kevin Puts artist page: interviews, features and/or performances archived at NPR Music

Kevin Puts

Subscribe to Breaking News Alerts

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts is still inspired by the age-old symphonic form. Andrew Shapter hide caption

toggle caption

Andrew Shapter

Opinion

Deceptive Cadence

Why Write Symphonies?

August 5, 2013 • Kevin Puts won the Pulitzer Prize for his opera Silent Night. He's written concertos and lots of other music, but he says writing a symphony is a particularly moving experience: "I need a private place where I can express the spiritual, the epic, the heartbreaking without shame or embarrassment."

Symphonic Music, American Style: 3 Must-Hear Albums

San Juan Bautista Mission in California, the inspiration for Kevin Puts' Symphony No. 4. Wikimedia hide caption

toggle caption

Wikimedia

Review

Deceptive Cadence

Symphonic Music, American Style: 3 Must-Hear Albums

July 24, 2013 • Hear excerpts from three new albums, each telling a distinctly different American story — from a Toscanini-obsessed symphonic fantasy to a special preview of a majestic symphony of clashing cultures.

Hear The Opera That Just Won The Pulitzer

Kevin Puts' Pulitzer-winning opera recounts a spontaneous cease-fire among Scottish, French and German troups during World War I. Michal Daniel/Minnesota Opera hide caption

toggle caption

Michal Daniel/Minnesota Opera

Classics in Concert

Hear The Opera That Just Won The Pulitzer

MPR News

April 23, 2012 • Kevin Puts based his winning score on the French film Joyeux Nöel, which tells the true story of a surprise cease-fire among German, French and Scottish soldiers on the battlefields of World War I.

Listen: Prolgue & Act 1

1:12:00

Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/151211677/151215449" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">