Erich Kunzel, long-time conductor of the Cincinnati Pops, died a year ago today, at the age of 74. Kunzel wasn’t just Cincinnati’s conductor -- for nearly two decades, he led the National Symphony Orchestra in A Capitol Fourth and Memorial Day concerts on the lawn of the Capitol Building that were broadcast around the country on PBS.

My turntable broke about 15 years ago. It was around the time of the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company. I went to see the show and came home eager to put on my original cast album to ‘compare’. The turntable died in the middle of the title song. 

This is the last week of the traditional vacation season. I love the terms associated with vacation. To “vacate” means to “get out.”  “Relax” means to “loosen.” We also “take a break,” have “time off,” and “get away.” In all of those words or phrases is the idea of relief from everyday routine, and there are myriad ways to escape quotidian matters.

Tomorrow night, the Metropolitan Opera starts its second annual (hopefully, anyway) Summer HD Festival. They’ll be spending the next ten nights out on Lincoln Center Plaza showing operas that were originally beamed live into movie theaters. And it’s free!

Leonard Bernstein was a man of supreme charisma and fantastic talent. A conductor, composer and educator, Bernstein was an undying advocate for composers, new works, new ideas, and the concept of music as a living art in the modern world. For all of these reasons, Bernstein seems a sort of spiritual antecedent to Q2.

We at WQXR are putting together a very special CD. The theme is New York. So if you live in New York, used to live in New York, wish to live in New York or have heard of New York – we want to know what classical music you’d want on such a recording -- and why?

An acquaintance recently said to me, "Terrance, I think you might be too square for her" (referring to a friend of hers). That comment got me thinking about the degree to which one's personality is shaped by vocation.

Adam Delehanty, who keeps our schedules straight at WQXR, just asked, "This may be a naïve question, but why does Mozart's music all have "K." numbers after it?"  It's a great question.

I hadn’t even read the ecstatic New York Times review of Mark Morris Dance Group’s Mostly Mozart Festival performance of L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato  yet when I called my Mom, and said I would cheerfully go right back and see it again.  Sitting in the theater, I was thrilled by the imaginative choreography and luminous dancing, and also by the fact that it was all “accompanied” by a topnotch, live performance of a piece by Handel.

Although I work in the non-visual medium of radio, by training I'm a visual artist. I graduated from art school, and worked for ten years as a graphic designer and illustrator before moving to radio via my lifelong love of music. I think that radio actually is a visual medium, it's just that the associated images are conjured in the imagination of the listener, rather than on paper or on canvas.

I have to confess that I didn't spend too much time following the story of Chelsea Clinton's wedding. However, yesterday I found myself surfing the Web looking for news of any music that was played during the ceremony.  There was no mention that I could find.

I have a rule about street musicians. If they make me smile, I give them money. And that goes for subway musicians, too.

Greetings from hot and sticky Rome, where--in stark contrast to equally hot and sticky New York City--air conditioning is deemed bad for the human organism and therefore largely avoided. But the thick air gives the city a slow pace, so there is time now to reflect and report on what turned out to be a very busy spring of music-making.

There are lots of ways to cope with this hot July, ranging from going into the shade out of the direct sun, to going to Australia, which is so out of the direct sun that it's winter. There isn't much that we can do over the radio to cool your body, but maybe we can offer the illusion of a cooler atmosphere through music.

Participating composer and performer Matthew Whittall reviews the second half of Finland's premier contemporary music festival, Time of Music, a program peppered with names such as Marco Stroppa, Markus Trunk, Kaija Saariaho, Michael Jarrell, Joji Yuasa and Karlheinz Stockhausen. For those of you who haven't read the first installment of our Time of Music coverage, Matthew Whittall is a freelance composer, teacher, and music writer based in Helsinki, Finland.

This week, I attended the third Naumburg Orchestral Concert of the summer season in Central Park. And, it made me start to wonder...

Finland is home to the longest-running festival of contemporary music in Scandinavia, Time of Music. Participating composer, performer and program writer, Matthew Whittall reviews the week of performances on-site, right from the lake country town of Viitasaari. Originally a Canadian, Whittall studied composition and performance in the states, but he now resides in Helsinki, where he is a composer, teacher, and music writer.

What does the City sound like...in pictures? Friday, July 23rd is the last day to show us. WQXR's Jerome L. Greene Space is holding a contest called "Making Visible the Invisible," looking for photos that portray the sound of New York.

Monday night I played a recording of J.S.Bach's Capriccio on the Departure of his Beloved Brother. It's one of those pieces that at times sounds easy enough for a novice. Bach was in his teens when he composed it.

The cliché September school essay, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” will be no problem for me this year. Earlier this month, I fulfilled a dream of hiking in the Alps.