In January, the innovative string-band Ethel recorded works by eleven student composers of the Chickasaw Nation. The album will be released on Thunderbird Records in June, and is the first of its kind. Q2 brings you exclusive interviews with Chickasaw Nation composers Courtney Parchcorn and Cruise Berry by Ethel violinists Cornelius Dufallo and Mary Rowell, along with excerpts from their compositions.

Some artists, for one reason or another,

Zhou Long simultaneously embraces and transcends our notions of traditional Chinese classical and contemporary Western classical music. Madame White Snake is a beguiling articulation of Zhou's vision.

Over the weekend, I checked out a chamber music concert.

If you’ve been going to classical music concerts for more than twenty years..

This week during Symphony Hall we’ll be listening to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

Did you start to learn an instrument or start to take voice lessons ‘later in life’? Are you afraid you won’t really master it, because you’ve started later, or does that matter? I’d like to hear your stories.

Lisa Bielawa is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition and a guest blogger for Q2. She is currently spending a year composing at the American Academy in Rome and this week she writes about international artistic collaboration.

This week, Q2's Composer Introduction Series features the music of Caleb Burhans. Sample pianist Danny Holt's Innova recording of Burhans In Time of Desperation and download it for free during this exclusive, week-long Q2 spotlight.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been featuring music from artists nominated for Grammy Awards this year. The Grammy Awards are Sunday, Jan 31st. 

This time of year is a time of both recharging, refueling and purging.

Hear the New York Philharmonic’s inaugural CONTACT! concert this week on Q2, and read what the blogosphere is saying right now.

As I spend more time in the community here at the American Academy in Rome, I realize that being a performer as well as a composer brings so many more ways to integrate into community life, and to open myself up more completely to the various influences of Rome on my musical imagination.

Steve Reich has graciously allowed me to share a few emails from his correspondence with eighth blackbird during the composition and preparation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2008 work Double Sextet. I hope these shed a little light on his creative process. You can also read an interview I did with Steve here.

1985 (I guess it must’ve been) was the first time I sat down with Steve Reich to ask him to write for Kronos. 

The members of So Percussion spend a lot of time and energy performing Steve Reich’s music. His contributions to percussion music loom over the still-emerging genre. They are so fun to listen to, play, and discuss. When we sat down to write some thoughts on this legacy, it really came pouring out!

This week we're celebrating Beethoven's birthday.

Steve Reich once told me: “The musicians who can play my music with the right rhythmical feel are being born now…” Practicing the classical music repertoire is not enough to prepare you for playing his music.

I first met Steve Reich in January 1995. Bang on a Can had started a chamber orchestra for which I was the conductor. Our first concert that January featured Reich's Eight Lines.  After that concert, Michael Gordon introduced me to Reich.

I love the way radio brings music directly to the listener. Gigantic symphonies can become an intimate experience; a full opera is staged in the imagination of each listener; great performers play for you as you sit comfortably at home or in your car. It's a beautiful way to experience music, but it's not a substitute for attending a live performance. The experience of the living, breathing moment music is made, in the presence of the musicians and other listeners, adds another dimension altogether.