The Musician Building the Great Native American Songbook

Tim Long, a pianist, conductor and teacher, conceived his project to fill a cultural need: “There is no repertoire like this in existence.”

The musician Tim Long was sitting at his dining room table on a September morning, looking at old family photos and talking about how good can sometimes emerge from suffering.

Long’s mother, Stella, a member of the Choctaw Nation, grew up destitute in rural eastern Oklahoma. When she was young, her widowed mother remarried and moved nearby, leaving Stella and her four brothers to fend largely for themselves. The Oklahoma government put the children in boarding school, where Stella caught tuberculosis. One of her lungs had to be removed, and she endured two stints in quarantine that lasted a total of five years.

One thing that gave her solace was her discovery of a classical music station on the radio. She developed a special fondness for Beethoven.

“Without that, I wouldn’t be in music,” Long, 56, said over cups of oolong tea. “My life would not have happened if she — if my parents — had not had that broader outlook.”

Long’s wide-ranging life in music has included playing the violin and piano, conducting, coaching singers and teaching. And now, he has taken on a new role, perhaps the most significant yet: commissioning.