Learning an instrument isn't easy, but getting to fake one for a Hollywood film is no picnic either. Christopher Walken talks about his role as a cellist in "A Late Quartet."

Tonight at 7 pm in The Greene Space, composer Huang Ruo joins host David Garland for an evening of conversation and premiere performances from New York and China-based composers.

On Monday, March 26 at 7 pm, Q2 Music welcomes San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas, composer John Adams and the St. Lawrence String Quartet to The Greene Space.

As the intense emergency of the 9/11 attacks subsided, David Garland turned to the music of 18th Century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Moved by Bach's deep emotion, the beauty of Bach's musical logic, and the profound way Bach's music is able to express the truths and ideals of humanity, Garland created "Bach: Solace and Inspiration," to inaugurate WNYC's return to music programming on September 23, 2001. For this tenth anniversary of 9/11, Garland has assembled highlights from the original program.

British composer Gavin Bryars is internationally famous—except in the U.S., where his works still remain relatively under-appreciated. Tonight at 8:50, Q2 kicks off a week-long Bryars festival with a live broadcast from the Guggenheim Museum.

The list of Elizabeth Taylor's films includes daring, challenging stories, and they were scored with exceptional music. Here are a few of host David Garland's favorites.

What touch! Pianist Garrick Ohlsson had an eloquent dialogue tonight with his instrument, with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and with all of us listening to his Carnegie Hall performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. Ohlsson's fingers on the keyboard managed precise intricacies, each note articulated clearly, but I was so impressed with the way all notes integrated into a vivid, thrilling whole.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of recording an in-studio performance by composer Van Dyke Parks, which will broadcast on my WNYC show Spinning On Air this Sunday evening at 8 pm. My first exposure to Parks's work was when I heard The Beach Boys song “Heroes and Villains” on the radio while a kid back in the 1960s. Parks wrote the lyrics for that song, and subsequently worked on The Beach Boys’ “Smile” and his own 1968 album “Song Cycle,” and many projects since. Back when I first heard his music I knew it was new, exciting, and different, but I probably didn’t recognize that it was such an effective, natural blend of folk, pop, and classical influences.

The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger makes songs which are ornate, fanciful, tuneful, and unusual. The band is Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and his partner in life and music, Charlotte Kemp Muhl. The duo plays multiple instruments and sings in harmony about elegant gardens, dystopian futures, striving scientists, a smarmy impresario, and much more. Check out the group performing "Lavender Road" below.

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.