Classically trained violinists are, generally speaking, a focused breed accustomed to long hours in the practice room refining a phrase down to static perfection. This is perhaps what makes the Oberlin and Juilliard-trained violinist Jennifer Choi’s seemingly voracious appetite to try new things so striking. From Brahms to improv to serving as the concertmaster for the pit orchestra of South Pacific, Choi seems unable, or at least unwilling, to sit still.

In just three years, the fledgling Chicago-based EveryPeople Workshop has asked this question about the jazz quartet, the big band, The Nutcracker, and the string quartet, and there is more to come. The EveryPeople Workshop is a collective arts organization formed by Mikel Avery with the assistance of Nick Gajewski, and Nick Mazzarella to produce the original artistic work of its members and to build community through creativity.

There are few opportunities these days to hear live performances of the deeply felt, sonorously shaped music of the New England composer Walter Piston. His colleague Aaron Copland called Piston “one of the most expert craftsmen American music can boast,” which has become a standard assessment. It has also boxed him in. While intended as a compliment, this appraisal suggests Piston to be something of a technocrat, a musician of the mind rather than the heart. This impression is far from the case.

Many scores are visually striking, but Will Redman’s catalog carries a particularly strong “take this piece and frame it” vibe. In his work, fragments of traditionally notated music can be found free-floating on an eight foot scroll or overlayed on top of one another to form a dense nest of competing musical ideas, with lines and other abstract graphic symbols implying mood and character.

I’m sitting outside, picnicking with my family in a beautiful spot, sharing a view of a gorgeous river with 5,000 fellow residents of my rural community at southern Maryland’s River Concert Series. I see lots of young kids, teenagers, multi-generational families, people from all walks of life. I see a hillside just behind the stage, full of children running and playing. We’re watching the Chesapeake Orchestra, conducted by Jeffrey Silberschlag. The River Concert Series has been uniting my community for thirteen seasons.

The Dutch government is slashing two hundred million euros literally overnight from the country’s arts budget. As a result, STEIM, along with many other arts organizations and music ensembles in the Netherlands, is losing funding in a drastic and devastating blow to the culture sector (read The Dark Age Netherlands). Despite all of STEIM’s activities and generous service and support to the international community, on January 1, 2013, it will lose its entire structural funding.

I am what is known in certain Asian circles as a banana: yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Yellow as a product of Chinese parents; white as a result of my being born in Canada to parents who immigrated to Canada before I was born. And as it is for many second-generation Asians, the question of my identity includes a complex web of issues that have no easy resolution.

“I just really like music,” admits violist Nadia Sirota with an intensity that explodes the meaning of this otherwise simple sentiment. “I really like just trying to communicate to the audience what I think the composer means, and maybe I’m pretty eccentric and aggressive about it.”

Imagine the question from a friend when asking what you have on your device and unabashedly answering something to the effect of “everything that’s ever been recorded.” Although not impossible, the shame of having it “all” but at a quality unworthy of the potential our ears have to hear it would be hardly worth it.

I want to thank Noah Weber for his thoughtful comments on Emily Howell’s music. Beneath a lot of what Weber says about Emily Howell rests this notion of humans versus machines. I find it confusing that when we use computers for bookkeeping, Internet shopping, email, and so forth, it’s called a tool. But when some people use computers for creative work, computers suddenly become beings in their own right, apparently operating as something far greater than tools.