A crowd leans forward in their seats, not only hearing the settle nuances of the music, but listening to them. The conductor raises his arms, as musicians of all different backgrounds play for the audience.

“What Makes It Great?” will be performed by Rob Kapilow, a conductor, composer and NPR at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 7, and at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Jan.8, in the Dinkelspiel Auditorium on the Stanford Campus.

Though the same musicians will perform in both performances, the programs will be different, according to Stanford Lively Arts Program Notes. The Dec. 7 performance will include an exploration of Leonard Bernstein’s music, including West Side Story and the Jan. 8 performance will include an inside look into Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring.

Through movement, song and conducting of his musicians, Kapilow will encourage the audience to sing and focus on the music as he takes it apart and analyzes the very aspects of them that make them great. Kipilow will not only show the pieces of the music that make them so eloquent, but also the parts that have retarded them. For example, he may count the measures in a song and show the measure that is an aberration to the phrase, making it sound irregular rather than predictable.

According to Stanford Lively Arts Program Notes, Kapilow makes sure to keep his explanations short and rapid to keep the audience’s focus. Kapilow is able to get his idea across in a simple manner while still providing a philosophical and sagacious explanation.

Kapilow’s series, “What Makes It Great?”, has been featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today for 10 years and has also been performed live numerous times for the Celebrity Series of Boston, Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, the Cerritos Performing Arts Center, and the Friends of Chamber Music in Kansas City.

Kapilow’s inspiration for “What Makes It Great?” grew out of his experiences with conducting the show Nine on Broadway which he conducted 322 times. He realized that there was a stark difference between his audiences in New York and New Haven. The audiences in New York completely understood and responded to the language of the play, however, the New Haven audience did not.

“I wanted to turn around and say to the Yale audiences, ‘Hey wait a minute, everyone, listen to this, listen to that…’” Kapilow said in an exclusive interview with iClassics.com.

His desire to show his audiences both the good and bad aspects of this fantastic art became one of the root ideas of “What Makes It Great.”

According to iClassics.com, Kapilow also got his inspiration from was an art history class he took in college. The method the teacher used in spending one class in looking at one single painting was eye-opening for Kapilow.

“For me, it was the difference between looking and seeing,” Kapilow said to iClassics.com.

Kapilow embraced this idea in his music, and more specifically, for “What Makes It Great?” He would not only entertain his audiences, but show them the difference between hearing and listening he said to iClassics.com.

“When you begin to hear things that make great music great, a work can spring to life as if you had never heard it before,” Kapilow said to iClassics.com.

To order tickets by phone, by fax, by mail, or in person, contact the Stanford Ticket Office at 650-725- 2787 or order tickets online at livelyarts.stanford.edu