For more than four decades, the surest way to hear a working classical musician talk unhurried, in their own words, about the piece they were about to play was to tune in to Bill McGlaughlin. McGlaughlin, the composer, conductor and public radio host who built two of American classical radio's longest running programs around that idea, died in July 2026 at 82, according to Interlochen Public Radio.

He grew up in Philadelphia with mixed Scottish and South Philadelphia roots. He took up piano as a child after his older brother turned down the family's pre-paid lessons, and later switched to trombone, going on to study conducting at Temple University under William Smith, at the time associate conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, according to Saint Paul Sunday. For roughly a decade he played trombone professionally, first with the Philadelphia Orchestra and then with the Pittsburgh Symphony, before he left the section for the podium.

Conducting carried him across the country. He served seven years as associate conductor of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, then held music director posts with the Eugene Symphony, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, before settling in for twelve seasons as music director of the Kansas City Symphony, where he widened the orchestra's repertoire and commissioned new work.

It was radio, though, that carried McGlaughlin's voice furthest. In March 1981 he hosted the first broadcast of Saint Paul Sunday, an all Bach program built around the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and he stayed at the microphone for the next 26 years, according to the MPR Archive. The show paired live in-studio performances with conversation, drawing out the human side of every guest, and it won a Peabody Award, broadcasting's highest honor, in 1995. Alongside it he also hosted "Concerts from the Library of Congress" and co-hosted "Center Stage From Wolf Trap," lending his voice to public radio's chamber music coverage well beyond his own two flagship programs.

He was not finished when Saint Paul Sunday's run ended in 2007. The National Endowment for the Arts had already given WFMT Radio Network a special grant, in November 2002, to build a new daily program around him, and Exploring Music began national syndication on October 6, 2003, eventually reaching more than 200 public radio markets, according to WWFM. For the next 22 years he opened recordings, told the stories behind them, and closed each hour the way he had for a quarter century before: as a working musician talking to other musicians, for an audience he trusted to listen closely. He and engineer Bill Siegmund recorded their final episodes together in December 2025. McGlaughlin's last broadcasts as host, built around a program titled "Curse of the Ninth! Ninth Symphonies," were set to air the week of August 17, 2026, handing the show to his successor, Peter van de Graaff.

"I will miss hearing his voice each evening," wrote Mona Seghatoleslami, the WXXI Classical host and music director whose own nightly shift handed straight into his, in a tribute published after his departure from the show was announced. "Thank you, Bill, for all the music and stories and fun."

He kept composing alongside all of it. He made his public debut as a composer in 1997 with "Three Dreams and a Question: Choral Songs on e. e. cummings," which was warmly received, and went on to premiere five more works within ten months. "Aaron's Horizons," one of the pieces that followed, honored Aaron Copland, with whom McGlaughlin had worked in the 1970s. Subito Music began publishing his scores in 1998, and he later composed a piece for 800 voices and orchestra for Continental Harmony, a National Endowment for the Arts millennium project.

McGlaughlin's partner for many years was jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson. Near the end of Exploring Music's run, he said the program had given him a wonderful chance to do what he loved best: exploring some of the greatest accomplishments of humanity in some depth. Allyson announced his death herself. "It is with deep sorrow that I announce the passing of my beloved partner, Bill McGlaughlin," she wrote. "In this season of grief, I am grateful for your kindness, your prayers, and the privacy to honor a life deeply loved and forever remembered."

What McGlaughlin built keeps going without him. Exploring Music airs nightly under its new host on the format he invented. Saint Paul Sunday's quarter century of in-studio sessions remain archived for public radio stations to draw from. His compositions stay in print through Subito Music, ready for the choirs and orchestras that program them, and the two shows he shaped continue introducing listeners to musicians talking, unhurried, about the work in front of them, the same way he first thought to let them.