As WQXR presents Beethoven Awareness Month, Q2 Music spotlights today's most distinct and inventive compositional voices. This week Nadia Sirota focuses on the music of Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon. 

Rhythm is often experienced in a very primal way, and perhaps it is because of its organic presence within our own existence. It may first go unnoticed, yet underneath the deafening chaos of life, one cannot help but notice the soft, undying murmur of a certain pulse, carrying on like an agent of order. This week's Cued Up orbits around the rhythms of composers Andy Akiho, John Adams, Daniel Wohl, Julian Day and Filippo Perocco.

Today at 1 pm, we celebrate Beethoven Awareness Month with pianist Jeremy Denk. We delve into the revolutionary nature of Beethoven's works and ask—who are the modern-day Beethovens? And is such a distinction still relevant?

This week Hammered! takes its programmatic cue from the probing musical curiosity of pianist Alexei Lubimov and begins Monday with a recital recorded last year live at Lincoln Center's inaugural White Light Festival, which is currently midway through another illuminating installation of performances for its 2011 festival.

There must be some deep-seated, funny, psychologically-sound logic behind the release of big-budget disaster films during the hottest months. For whatever reason, there seems no more appropriate course of action these days than watching explosions and zombie-slayings, riding roller coasters and eating absurd fried things. Summer is a season of excess, and this week’s show features bombastic, over-the-top, Micheal Bay-esque music. (These shows originally aired the week of July 25, 2011.)

Concert music is perhaps one of the few art forms that is born purely of abstraction. Each composition demands the composer construct a new world with its own set of rules and regulations. The composition becomes the sole portal into this new sonic universe, through which we get a glimpse of the artist’s vision. However, some pieces come with a history, and, while entirely original and independent, connect with the audience somewhat differently. The experience of listening becomes filled with discovery of the new and surprises of sensing familiar traces.

This Friday at 1 pm on The New Canon, we tread into forbidden territory with the bassoon, championed by bassoonist Rachael Elliott and composer Padma Newsome. Though it has an undeserved bad rap, the bassoon can be beguiling, sonorous, nuanced and a vivid vehicle for music. Fresh off of her most recent new release and NYC appearances, Rachael Elliott talks about bringing glory back to an instrument that composer and music critic Cecil Gray once described as the "Gorgonzola" of musical instruments, "a figure of fun."

This week's programmatic sorbet on Hammered features unlikely pairings: Bach and Rzewski, Beethoven and Ligeti. Find out what these jarring relationships say about the music at hand.

The weather, it seems, has finally broken and the Fall is truly upon us. Hooray Autumn!! All the various ensembles are starting back up post summer hiatuses, we get to enjoy un-iced coffee, and I personally can start ramping up for the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. I enjoy the holidays, and I’ve just found out that two of my close friends are playing this season’s Radio City Christmas Spectacular (my not-so-guilty pleasure; the first 15 minutes of that thing truly justify its being called a spectacular. Plus: boozy slushies with light-up swizzle sticks and 3-D and live camels and the Rockettes.) Everything’s gonna be fine.

It’s probably safe to assume that the human voice is the oldest of all musical instruments (and one with a slow, but unstoppable development). One of the conspicuous characteristics of the contemporary music scene is the radically diverse ways composers incorporate and alter the human voice and language in their music. This Sunday on Cued Up, we'll be having an hour-long exploration of the versatility and adaptability of this oldest of instruments. 

This week, the New Canon moves to its new home on Fridays at 1 and kicks off with Brooklyn Rider's Johnny Gandelsman and Nicholas Cords to talk about the quartet's compositional collaboration. Our chat begins at 1:00pm.