Each month, Our State senior editor — and resident soundtrack maker — Mark Kemp, a former music editor of Rolling Stone, curates a one-of-a-kind Spotify playlist featuring North Carolina songs and musicians.

As temperatures drop and skies turn gray, nothing soothes the wintertime soul quite like the rich and warm sounds of classical music — the brass, wind, string, and percussion instruments; the soprano, mezzo, tenor, and bass voices. But when we think North Carolina music, we don’t usually think classical. We think jazz legend John Coltrane, folk-bluegrass pioneer Doc Watson, or more contemporary artists like the Avett Brothers and Rhiannon Giddens.

Make no mistake about it: North Carolina has a copious classical legacy.

Take, for instance, Greensboro-born Giddens: The popular folk artist actually started out as an opera singer, and an example of her classical leanings can be found in this month’s Our State playlist. Here, Giddens collaborates with pianist Lara Downes on an interpretation of Leonard Bernstein’s 1968 anti-war composition “So Pretty.” Another contemporary classical musician from North Carolina is Greenville-born composer, singer, and violinist Caroline Shaw, who won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her a cappella piece Partita for 8 Voices — her haunting and lyrical “Three Essays: First Essay (Nimrod)” kicks off this playlist. And then there’s composer William Brittelle, who was born into a strict religious family in the western part of the state; in “Birds of Paradise,” he deftly blends classical composition with his love of rock, hip-hop, and other popular-music forms for a searingly personal piece that explores his difficult relationship with Christianity.

Dig more deeply into the history of classical music in the Tar Heel state and you’ll find such groundbreaking composers as Lamar Stringfield, born in Raleigh in 1897 and known for his blending of Appalachian folk traditions with classical music (here, you’ll find his lovely Pastorale Scene for flute and harp); the Morganton-born, East Carolina University-educated minimalist composer William Duckworth (represented here by “Prelude XVIII”); and Benson native Hunter Johnson, who in 1991 became North Carolina’s first composer laureate (listen here to his dramatic Trio for Flute, Oboe and Piano, composed in 1954).

Beyond those composers and classical-pop crossover artists are scores of traditionally minded singers, including Rocky Mount-raised Cynthia Clary (here singing “My Man’s Gone Now,” as Serena in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess); Laurinburg-born countertenor Bejun Mehta (represented here with a jaw-dropping performance of the Bach aria “Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen,” from his cantata Ich habe genug); and Sedalia-born African American opera legend Carol Brice (in her 1958 role as Addie in Regina, singing “Night Could Be Time to Sleep, Night Could Be Time to Weep”). High Point-born tenor Anthony Dean Griffey sings “Höchste Herrscherin der Welt,” from Mahler’s Symphony No. 8; Thomasville mezzo-soprano Victoria Livengood sings Haydn’s “The Mermaid’s Song”; and Winston-Salem native Martha Flowers tackles an extended suite of songs from Porgy and Bess.

You’ll also hear from a few symphonies, including the North Carolina Symphony performing “Moderato,” the first movement of William Walton’s Cello Concerto; Greensboro’s Bel Canto Company performing “Et Deus Inspiravit… (And God breathed…),” from Dan Forrest’s The Breath of Life; and the Greensboro Symphony performing “Movements Four South: Introduction,” from Shirl Jae Atwell’s Lucy.

Finally, to ring in 2023 with a little swagger, we have Griffey returning with the full cast of It’s a Wonderful Life to close things out on a rousing “Auld Lang Syne.”