On this edition of Living Classical, Tyler Kline marks Juneteenth with music by living Black American composers. Featured this week: Ahmed Alabaca's Mere Mortals, holding to the conviction that human life is precious and deserves compassion; Alvin Singleton's Time Past, Time Future, a piece that moves between Thelonious Monk and Bach in search of balance; Valerie Coleman's Tracing Visions, which shifts between an elegy and a Zulu battle cry for unity; and a setting of a Harle

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Vivian Fung's Violin Concerto grew out of two things happening at once – a friendship with a violinist who wanted to understand where Fung's ideas came from, and a tour of Bali that brought those ideas into sharp focus. The result draws on gamelan sonorities, odd meters, and a cadenza with a single instruction: "play like a rock star." Then: In most concertos, the soloist leads and the orchestra follows. But Dai Fujikura's

Sound, Empathy, and the Art of Healing with Lillian Yee Photo credit: Emma Faye LISTEN Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | Acast | Deezer Content note: This episode briefly touches on suicidal ideation and sexual assault. On today's episode of music/Maker with Tyler Kline, Tyler is joined by composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Lillian Yee. San Francisco Bay Area-based Lillian Yee (余慧森) has built a creative practice that resists easy categorization. H

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Toru Takemitsu described Dreamtime the way he described dreams themselves–short episodes suspended in seeming incoherency that somehow form a whole. Written for dance in 1981, the piece moves through a shimmering orchestral texture where melodic shapes surface briefly, pass, and dissolve before anything quite resolves. Then: A William Meredith poem about the beautiful randomness of perceived systems–stars, islands, relatio

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Immigration rarely accounts for the emotional cost of leaving–the grief, the inner conflict, the world you build in your mind versus the one you find. Joe Kye's Safe Harbor holds all of it, weaving Korean and American folk music with his own text into a piece that moves from a childhood lullaby to a personal mantra for rooted self-empowerment. Then: Lei Liang first encountered the folk music of Taiwan's aboriginal tribes a

Tinkering New Instruments and Sounds into Being with Rob Funkhouser LISTEN Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | Acast | Deezer On today's episode of music/Maker with Tyler Kline, Tyler is joined by composer, performer, installation artist, and educator Rob Funkhouser. Based in Indianapolis, Rob Funkhouser builds instruments out of metal mixing bowls, copper pipe, plywood, glass rods, and whatever else is at hand — and then writes music for them. His work engage

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Nubia Jaime-Donjuan composes from the intersection of two worlds–a cellist and composer raised in Sonora, Mexico, drawn to the cultural and natural textures of her environment. Tyler Kline shares two of her works, including Danza Mestiza, a piece that links Spanish and Mexican musical traditions in a single dance. Then: Conceived in Iceland, Linda Buckley's Friður pairs piano with an electronic track that creates an atmosp

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Love, in Travis LaPlante's String Quartet II, is not a simple feeling: it's a force that keeps expanding throughout the compositional process, from a father's sacrifice to a wedding day promise to starlight and angels and golden ladders. It's music that pushes consonant harmony to its limits before the melodic payoff arrives. Then: In Inuit mythology, the inua is the soul that lives within all things–human beings, animals,

Disrupting and Reimagining Musical Structures with Brittany J. Green Photo credit: Shanita Dixon LISTEN Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | Acast | Deezer On today's episode of music/Maker with Tyler Kline, Tyler is joined by composer, performer, and educator Brittany J. Green. Brittany's music works to create intimate, collaborative musical spaces at the intersection of sound, video, movement, and text — described by the Washington Post as "a creative force o

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Faith, doubt, and the will to persevere – Sarah Kirkland Snider's Forward Into Light traces the emotional and psychological terrain of the American women's suffrage movement, built around a musical quote from the movement's own anthem. Then: In theory, there is only one horizon, but in lived experience, there are two: the visible horizon, shaped by everything that surrounds us, and the true horizon, the full unobstructed r

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Allison Loggins-Hull wrote Legacy for The Cleveland Orchestra's community series, partnering with organizations preserving Ukrainian bandura traditions, the Hough neighborhood's history, and Black American theatrical artistry. A recurring vocal theme faces interruptions and reinterpretations but remains recognizable—much like legacy itself. Then: Tyler is joined by Eunmi Ko, president of Contemporary Art Music Project in T

Building New Music from the Ground Up with Mendel Lee LISTEN Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | Acast | Deezer On today's episode of music/Maker with Tyler Kline, Tyler is joined by composer Mendel Lee. New Orleans-based composer, artistic entrepreneur, VCCA Fellow, and NPN Take Notice Fund grantee, Mendel Lee has built a creative practice that moves fluidly between writing music and building the infrastructure to support it. Since leaving his long tenure as

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: What happens when a composer working primarily with electronics takes something electronic and makes it acoustic? Alex Dowling's Inner Orbits reimagines melodies and ideas from a previous electroacoustic work for string quartet—a compositional move from electronic to acoustic forces that he describes as refreshing, the constraints guiding him toward new ways of thinking. Then: The 1996 eruption under Iceland's Vatnajökull

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Learning to be fully present in a fast-paced world inspired Emma O'Halloran to write Only Moments to Live. The piece is structured as a dance between saxophone soloist and ensemble: gestures are picked up and expanded, with improvisational sections where everyone must listen and respond… and every performance will be different. Then: The movement of a spiral is usually depicted going downward, linked to anxiety and negativ

Letting the Music Find Its Own Way with Dai Fujikura Photo credit: Edgard Yamaguchi LISTEN Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | Acast | Deezer On today's episode of music/Maker with Tyler Kline, Tyler is joined by composer Dai Fujikura . Born in Osaka and based in London since moving to the UK at fifteen, Dai Fujikura is one of the most prolific and wide-ranging composers working today. Winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale, the Ivor Novello and

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: It's a reflection on beauty through light and shadow: Daniél Bjarnason wrote A Fragile Hope as a tribute to Jóhann Jóhannsson and the period when Iceland's distinct musical aesthetic was emerging. At the climax, a direct melodic reference to Jóhannsson's breakthrough work Englabörn. Then: Composer Bill Ryan has traveled to stunning landscapes across the United States with the GVSU New Music Ensemble, performing outdoors fo

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Likoo is a traditional song form from Iran's Baluchistan province, performed on bowed lute or paired flutes—music about grief and longing for a loved one. Aftab Darvishi's Likoo draws on that essence, reflecting a deep longing for those lost since the Women, Life, Freedom movement began in Iran in September 2022. The piece explores loss in its various dimensions: mothers, lovers, homeland. Then: After reading Haruki Muraka

Unlearning Restriction and Expanding into Creative Freedom with Shuying Li Photo credit: Lauren “Elle Jaye” Jenkins LISTEN Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | Acast | Deezer On today's episode of music/Maker with Tyler Kline, Tyler is joined by composer Shuying Li . Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as "vivid, dramatic" and described by The Seattle Times as "a real talent," Shuying Li writes bold, emotionally charged music that blends rich colors wit

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Sophia Jani wanted to break convention in her Woodwind Quintet No. 1: Music as Mirror—distributing the same musical elements equally across all five instruments instead of assigning each a specific role. The piece is built as a pulsating process that changes almost unnoticeably, slowly arriving somewhere completely different from where it began. Then: Unsuk Chin's double concerto for piano, percussion, and ensemble fuses s

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: We perceive inner light through eyes—contrasts of color influenced by emotion, memory, weather, the surrounding world. Ileana Pérez Velázquez's Lights of lives flowing from your eyes traces how light is drawn into the body and shines back out. It's music that moves between reflection and perception, shaped by a line from Matthew's gospel. Then: Repetition as structure and accumulation as gesture form the foundation of Zeyn