National Public Radio and Sony Classical have teamed up in an exciting new partnership to celebrate the millennium and mark the end of the 20th Century. National Public Radio "Milestones of the Millennium" is a new series of records and radio shows dedicated to exploring the development of music over the past 1,000 years. The series debuted on National Public Radio's "Performance Today" program on January 1, 1999 and will air weekly for the next two years. The show will touch on pivotal events, places, movements, artists and music, creating evocative images in sound.

The Sony Classical companion CD series will extend and amplify the theme and content of each radio program with selections and performances drawn from the rich Sony Classical archives, featuring such acclaimed artists as Leonard Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Yo-Yo Ma, Wynton Marsalis, Igor Stravinsky, John Williams and many others. Each CD contains an essay by the host of the corresponding NPR program. New CDs in the series will be released every 3-4 months through the year 2000.