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.

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.

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.

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.

As a cellist, Jonathan Golove is at ease in both the Western classical tradition and in contemporary art music. Since his participation as the cello theremin player in a performance of the Varèse work, Ecuatorial, at the University of Buffalo (where he also teaches cello), Golove has extensively researched this theremin-related instrument. Below, Golove colorfully profiles the relatively obscure cello theremin while describing Varèse's attraction to it.

Now in its 15th year, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas is a music, theater, and dance festival that takes place in New Haven, CT's historic courtyards, auditoriums and theaters. Festival highlights include a performances by Brooklyn's Electric Junkyard Gamelan, a percussion ensemble that builds its own instruments from found objects, Phillip Glass' performance of his solo piano music and a concert featuring the chamber ensemble repertoire of Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Christopher Rouse. With the festival's "arts and ideas" theme in mind, EJG founder Terry Dame describes the path that led her toward green instrument building.

Xenakis expert and contemporary music heavyweight Douglas Perkins will be a participating percussionist for Persephassa, part of the sprawling Make Music New York: Xenakis in Central Park happening on Monday, June 21 at the Central Park Boating Lake. It's a full afternoon of outdoor performances by the trailblazing Greek composer, featuring the bombastic Persephassa, for six percussionists, who will surround audience members experiencing the piece in floating rowboats on the lake!

ISSUE Project Room's Darmstadt Institute curators, Nick Hallett and Zach Layton, lift the cloak off of their musical and non-musical inspirations for this June festival.

For the first time after two sold out seasons, the Tribeca New Music Festival moves to uptown host Merkin Hall with a series of performances presented by the New York Art Ensemble. But the festival will keep its downtown feel, featuring the JACK Quartet performing an eclectic concert of six composers, New York Art Ensemble Monsters! performing a work by Phillip Glass, new media artist Luke Dubois collaborating with vocal quartet New York Polyphony, Pamela Z and Bora Yoon and a night of exciting composer/performer acts.

Throughout June, Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room will host its annual Darmstadt Institute festival, which takes part of its name from the German festival and city Darmstadt. The Brooklyn festival's concerts, talk-backs, lectures and film screenings all offer a varied look into the avant-garde. Darmstadt Institute performer Allison Loggins-Hull of the composer/performer flute duo, Flutronix, talks about the group’s musical upbringing and discusses the internet’s role as a musical matchmaker.

I’ve had quite the month. For the most part, I’ve been on a bus tour of Europe with the Bedroom Community label (Iceland). This label is unique in that the organizing principle is not really style or genre so much as quality, or interest or something.

When I was in high school, I took the Metro-North into New York City every weekend to study classical music. Those weekends I would often end up hanging out with friends in Greenwich Village, and I soon discovered the fading--but still vibrant--jazz scene in places like the Village Vanguard and Smalls.

Greetings after a grand hiatus in my blogging activity, due to a healthy-sized sojourn back on home soil (East and West coasts of the U.S.), and some adventures within Italy too, including a recent visit to nearby Palestrina, birthplace of Giovanni Pierluigi da... (Palestrina), memorialized here as the Prince of Music:

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

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.

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.

American artists, writers, and musicians have been crossing the Atlantic for centuries now to find inspiration and international camaraderie. Since the moment I stepped off the plane, I was aware that I am in a city whose architectural and artistic treasures would be a lasting and life-changing source of inspiration for me.

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.

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.