Be part of the audience for a "Person Place Thing" radio show taping hosted by Randy Cohen with special guest Ian Niederhoffer, music director of Parlando. The event will also feature live musical performances by select Parlando performers.

Person Place Thing is an interview show based on the idea that people are particularly engaging when they speak not directly about themselves, but about something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing that are important to them. The result: surprising stories from great speakers.

This event will be recorded for broadcast on Northeast Public Radio. For more information and to hear past episodes, visit PersonPlaceThing.org.

Praised for his elegance and dynamism on the podium, Ian Niederhoffer — the winner of three prizes at the 2021 Khachaturian International Conducting is a confident and expressive communicator of music, context, and ideas. Niederhoffer founded Parlando in 2019, which, through inventive programming, brings intimate and accessible orchestral experiences to wider audiences.  “Ian Niederhoffer makes good on [Parlando’s] motto: ‘Every concert tells a story’,” praised The New York Times in December 2023 about Parlando. “But smart, unusual programming on this level fosters a gripping narrative of its own, too.” Every Parlando program is joined by a common theme that forms a larger story arc. Before the concerts, Niederhoffer provides the musical and historical context to prepare the audience for the music. Parlando programs feature Niederhoffer’s “chili pepper system,” in which each “♪” symbol represents a level of listening difficulty, like in Thai restaurant menus.

In 2021 Niederhoffer was named Artist of Promise at the Conducting Academy of the Verbier Festival, where he was assistant conductor for Lahav Shani, Daniel Harding, Antonio Pappano, and Gábor Takacs-Nágy. In 2019 and 2022 Niederhoffer participated in the Järvi Conducting Academy at the Pärnu Music Festival. His principal teachers include Leonid Grin, Toshiyuki Shimada, and William Boughton.

Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, the Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for "Late Night With David Letterman" for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s "TV Nation." He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote "The Ethicist," a weekly column for the New York Times Magazine. In 2010, his first play, “The Punishing Blow,” ran at New York’s Clurman Theater. His most recent book, "Be Good: how to navigate the ethics of everything," was published by Chronicle. He is currently the creator and host of Person Place Thing, a public radio program.