9/8
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 transcribed for orchestra. Written with filmmaker Alexandra Cuesta, the piece is a lament for lost landscapes, shaped by both artists' vantage points on displacement and colonization.
9/15
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 string quartet, JOYRIDE, moves through road trips and wanderlust and self-discovery toward exactly that, a coming-of-age story told in four movements for string quartet.
9/22
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 Keting, Bobbie-Jane Gardner, Ollie Hawker, Sonia Lozina, Rebecca Galian Castello, Emma-Kate Matthews, and Molly Frances Arnuk.
9/29
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 about weather and food and journeys that took a turn for the worse. In Affix Stamp Here, each one becomes a song for solo voice over an electronic drone, and the prosaic details start to give way to glimpses of the real people who wrote them.