10/6
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 Lonsdale's Tears and Oceans unfolds in three parts with a kind of ritual intensity, letting historical traces from Monteverdi to twelfth-century organum resonate as if outside of time.
10/13
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 two guitars with a cotton bud, then listened closely to what that altered sound seemed to need. The piece moves across two movements, from "bend" to a "lullaby for the end/beginning."
10/20
On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Legend has it Muhammad Ali's 1960 Olympic gold medal ended up at the bottom of the Ohio River. Composer Valerie Coleman, who grew up in the same West Louisville neighborhood as Ali, turns that story into "Rome 1960: The Young Champion," a movement from her work Shotgun Houses. Then: Greeting cards mark the big moments of a life: "A Baby Boy," "You've Had Twins!," "Sorry to Hear About Your Accident." Seán Clancy threads fifty-five of those phrases through the score of Fourteen Minutes of Music on the Subject of Greeting Cards, tracing one anonymous life from cradle to grave, with a piano circling a single pitch that stands in for the protagonist.
10/27
On this special Halloween edition of Living Classical, Tyler Kline presents music of spells, nightmares, and nocturnal flight—séances, hauntings, and ghostly voices included. Featured this week: Eleanor Alberga's On a Bat's Back I Do Fly, which borrows its title from Ariel's song in Shakespeare's The Tempest and conjures a world that's bright, yet shadowy and otherworldly; and Linda Buckley's Water Witch, drawn from the Irish coastal folklore of sea witches, sirens, and selkies, with piano and electronics conjuring the ocean as both enchantress and destroyer.