WQXR Host's Musical Home in Harlem When Terrance McKnight gets a piano - that's his goal for this year, a piano and some bookshelves - his apartment in Harlem will be perfection. The weekday evening host at the classical radio station WQXR, Mr. McKnight, 49, has a sun-drenched living room, a kitchen of respectable size with good counter space and plenty of cupboards (he likes to cook on weekends), and a trio of closets. "I need them to hide my skeletons," he said waggishly. Well, in any case, his futon. But he'd happily swap a closet or two or, at the very least, reposition the pewter sectional in the living room, to accommodate the piano in question, his 7-foot-6 grand, a Yamaha C7. "I know I can get it in the front door," Mr. McKnight said. But I really don't think it will go around the corner at the third landing. I haven't gotten a guarantee that it will fit, and if can't get a guarantee I don't want to put the Yamaha - or me - through it. Piano has always been key to Mr. McKnight's identity. It was the first instrument he learned to play as a kid. He majored in piano performance at Morehouse College and then did a stint on the faculty. And piano is what helped set him on his subsequent career path: broadcasting. For the moment, the piano, which he saved up for during his five-year tenure as the host of a classical music program at Georgia Public Broadcasting, is being watched over by his brother in Ohio. Mr. McKnight speaks of the piano longingly, exactly as he might the girl who got away. "I'm not over it yet," he said. So I haven't bought an upright or anything. After he arrived here from Atlanta in 2008 to join the lineup at WNYC - he later moved up the dial to its sister public radio station WQXR - Mr. McKnight spent a year in Fort Greene. "I had a pianist friend who lived in Brooklyn and I thought he would help me get acclimated," he said. Then I met a lady who lived in Harlem, so I started going up there to visit her. He liked the neighborhood feel and the sense of community, "people talking to you in the morning on the street. Having lived in Georgia, that seemed very familiar to me," Mr. McKnight said. I decided to live in Harlem. That resolve hardened after a close brush with dead air. One of Mr. McKnight's first live New York broadcasts was a performance by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. "It was a Saturday and I had a hard time getting uptown from Brooklyn," he recalled. "The subway got rerouted and I was confused about how to navigate, and I said: "Man, as soon as my lease is up, I'm moving to Manhattan. I can't be late to Carnegie." " While Mr. McKnight knew he wasn't going to get everything he had savored in his Atlanta house - hardwood floors throughout, three bedrooms, a fireplace, a large deck off the living room and a backyard - he was hoping, at least, for a garden apartment with a fireplace. "But that was difficult to find in Harlem," he said. He happily settled for the top floor of a three-story walk-up that didn't have a fireplace but did have a compact deck. It also had those hardwood floors he so loved (he owns a timber farm in Mississippi) and a simpatico landlord, who it turned out was a big Terrance McKnight fan. Four years ago, he moved to a charming block between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Malcolm X Boulevards, thoroughfares that would intersect with his professional life. Powell's second wife, the pianist/singer Hazel Scott was, coincidentally, the subject of the first "musical biography" that Mr. McKnight produced at WQXR. "As an undergraduate I started reading about Powell," he said. I found out he'd been married to Scott, but he didn't talk about her a lot in his autobiography and I was just really curious about her. I was thinking: "Wow, I'm living near Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, I'm doing this piece about his wife. I'm where I need to be!" " He has since done specials about other locals, including Langston Hughes and Duke Ellington. "I look at the music they listened to and loved and how music affected their work and life," he said. As for how music has shaped Mr. McKnight, well, just look around his sparely furnished living room. The trumpet he played in elementary school hangs on the wall between the two windows. "It's the closest thing I have to my early musical past," he said. I was playing piano when I was 9 years old. But in school there was no piano in the little orchestra and I wanted to be involved with other people. I convinced my mother to buy me a trumpet, so she bought me this used one. In a corner on a floor is a djembe, an African drum that Mr. McKnight bought in 1996 on a trip to Ivory Coast soon after he had injured the tendons of his left hand with a lemon slicer. "I couldn't play the piano for a year, so I was at my wits" end," he said. The drum was therapy. There's a stack of CDs on the windowsill, evidence of the homework Mr. McKnight does for his show. On the desk is a figurine playing the balafon, a keepsake from the culture minister of Ivory Coast, and a Liszt figurine playing the piano, an object that for years Mr. McKnight kept on the top of his piano. Sigh. The retro-style Crosley record player - lately, Mr. McKnight has been listening to vinyl releases from André Watts and the Modern Jazz Quartet - was a birthday gift from a girlfriend. When he gets home from the station - his weekday show generally airs from 7 to 10 p.m.; his Saturday show, "All Ears With Terrance McKnight," from 10 p.m. to midnight - he eases himself through the window onto the snug deck, which is outfitted with a chair and a chaise longue from Target, tomato plants and a pot of rosemary, a tribute from a fan. "I fall asleep out there," he said. It's completely still at night. I go to work and people say, "Have you been on vacation?" "