On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: With little experience writing for solo saxophone, Harriet Steinke started by listening to the instrument itself–its ability to hold warmth and richness while still flashing with brassy brilliance. Every idea she had for it turned out to be about light, and Strange Lights became a study of exactly that, unfolding across three unbroken movements. Then: For her guitar duo same but different, Sylvia Lim prepared one of the tw

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: There's a stretch of Oregon wine country nestled between three mountain ranges, warmer and drier than everything around it, because the clouds passing over must shed their moisture along the way. Andrea Reinkemeyer's Rainshadow takes that phenomenon as its subject, tracing atmospheric compression and expansion across the ensemble. Then: Scored for an unusual mix of flute, clarinet, harpsichord, accordion, and strings, Eden

This week on Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Asuka Kakitani wrote The Garden the way you might tend one – imagining seedlings taking root, leaves emerging, the whole slow cycle of growth beneath our feet. Germination is one moment from the piece that does just what its name suggests: performed on solo double bass, it traces something beginning to take hold. Then: Leo Chadburn acquired and read several hundred mid-century British postcards before choosing thirty – messages

Learn more about PRXLUDES and their mission at https://prxludes.net/ On this special edition of Living Classical, Tyler Kline teams up with PRXLUDES–the UK's home for the most exciting new voices in contemporary music, co-hosted by Zygmund de Somogyi and Patrick Ellis. Together they spend the full show with the composers and performers shaping contemporary music across the UK. With music by Jorge Ramos, Joy Ingle, Michele Deiana, Millicent B James, Sylvia Lim, Rockey Sun Keti

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: The harp is usually associated with graceful, gentle music–but Joe Hisaishi wanted the opposite. His Harp Concerto is intense, wild, and dynamic, and it reaches its climax in the third movement: a toccata in F minor that arrives after a cadenza and drives the whole piece to its most intense point. Then: What if joy were a radical action–a way of being, of carving out spaces that feel more alive? Zygmund de Somogyi's third

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: When we take away language as our primary means of expression, how much meaning is lost – and how much is gained? Nina Shekhar's Vocalise asks exactly that: a song without words, and here she wonders whether the piano, unable to enunciate anything, might still find a way to sing. Then: Tonia Ko's Her Land, Expanded began with a field recording of church bells tolling in an eerie minor key – sounds she digitally froze, then

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Across cultures, a fifth element sits alongside earth, air, fire, and water – aether in ancient Greece, void in Japanese Buddhism, akasha in Vedantic Hinduism, where it carries the specific property of sound. Avner Dorman's The Fifth Element takes that idea as its subject: a quietness that lets us truly listen, and sound as the access point to everything else. Then: The title of Erkki-Sven Tüür's accordion concerto Prophec

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Nepali activist Nasreen Sheikh, a survivor of sweatshop labor, once said she spoke to the clothes she was forced to make, hoping whoever wore them might feel her tears. Evan Williams's Woven in Tears responds to a portrait of Sheikh by drawing on Dowland's Renaissance air "Flow, My Tears," transforming that lament over the course of the piece into something bursting with freedom. Then: Brittany J. Green lies awake thinking

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Gentle plucked notes open Eric Chasalow's Second String Quartet, supporting a sustained line passed between the instruments – until petulant outbursts start interrupting the revelry, growing until they take over. Chasalow calls his approach metaclassicism: memories of the iconic quartet repertoire triggered obliquely, then used as a jumping-off point for something new. Then: For violinist Sarah Plum, a piece isn't finished

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Every living thing breathes – and in recent years, Katelyn Petersen writes, everything has struggled to: the environment suffocating from pollution, people from isolation and illness, the spirit from a lack of rest. In her piece Respire, the instruments breathe together as one, each with its own struggle along the way. Then: At the southern tip of Baja California, granite arches mark the meeting of the Pacific and the Sea