Donato Cabrera is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, music director of the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, and he is the new music director for the New Hampshire Music Festival, a six week celebration of classical and chamber music performed every summer at the Silver Center at Plymouth State University. Donato Cabrera somehow found the time to join us to tell us some more about his work.

Back in March, we spoke with Vermont novelist David Blistein, about his latest book, David’s Inferno. The book is part memoir, part brain research, part rough guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy…and it’s also, surprisingly funny. David will read from the book and talk with the audience this evening, June 6, at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. He spoke with us about the razor thin-line between creativity and mania, and how ricocheting between those extremes was how he thrived for many years career as an ad agency executive. Here is the earlier conversation with David Blistein, the novelist, essayist, and blogger.

Reduce, reuse, recycle? Not in the medical profession. While recycling has become the aspiration or even the norm in most areas of our daily lives, an operating room is the one place where recycling feels like a dangerous practice. Recent studies provide staggering statistics of the amount of waste produced by hospitals on a daily basis; one conservative estimate puts annual hospital waste at five point nine million tons, with operating rooms accounting for twenty to thirty percent of that total. In light of these numbers, there is a growing effort to bring sustainability into the health care sector while still maintaining the highest level of hygiene.

All week, NHPR Education reporter Sam Evans Brown has been looking at a massive transition underway the Granite State, a new set of school standards known as the Common Core.  Educators nationwide have been shifting toward this new system. We’ll find out kind of discussions are taking place at our local schools among teachers, principals and students. 

Guests

NHPR is pleased to announce that it is accepting applications for the Barbara and Dick Couch Fellowship for Innovation.  The fellowship was created to develop the next generation of public radio talent and to bring new ideas and perspectives to NHPR.  This six month fellowship focusing on show production and digital media is based at NHPR’s broadcast center in Concord, New Hampshire.  Fellows will gain hands-on experience working on The Exchange, NHPR’s flagship public affairs program and exposure to a wide range of activities at the station.  Responsibilities will include: generating and r

With the new Common Core State Standards comes a new standardized test, called the Smarter Balanced Assessment. New Hampshire schools will take it for the first time in the spring of 2015, and in many ways, it’s the new test that will determine how the Common Core is taught.

On Wednesday the Executive Council authorized a new rail study  — one that examines whether to bring trains to Plaistow.

This study will cost far less than one approved earlier this year, for $3.9 million dollars to look at extending commuter rail from Lowell, Massachusetts to Nashua and then on up to Manchester and Concord.

  When we talk about local food in New Hampshire, most of us think of fruits and vegetables. But with our 18 miles of coastline, seafood has the potential to be a local food as well. This year’s big cuts to catch limits for fish like cod and haddock herald a rough year for New Hampshire ground fishermen. So they’re finding new ways to connect with local consumers to help them stay afloat. And their approach may be the first of its kind.