Each week, Tyler Kline journeys into new territory and demystifies the music of living composers on Modern Notebook. Listen for a wide variety of exciting music that engages and inspires, along with the stories behind each piece and the latest releases from today’s contemporary classical artists. Discover what’s in store on Modern Notebook, every Sunday night from 8 to 10 on Classical WSMR.
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Photo credit: Eric Schwabel.On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: What happens when our obsession with spectacle turns dangerous? Michael Abels’s Nope Suite, drawn from his score written for Jordan Peele’s genre-blending film, rides the line between sci-fi, horror, Western, and family drama — with a score that gallops, pursues, and holds space for both awe and fear.Then: Waves crash, skies open — and the piano becomes a landscape. In Pacific Triptych, Peter Scott Lewis captures the drama and majesty of the Pacific Coast across three movements, with a sense of scale that feels orchestral, even in its quietest moments. -
Photo credit: Kevin Condon.On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Conrad Tao’s Undone reimagines the myth of Undine — a water spirit who longs for a soul, only to be betrayed and dissolve back into the sea. But in Tao’s telling, she returns not as a victim, but a force — newly powerful, her waves rising higher in a world reshaped by climate change.Then: Written during the pandemic, Chan Ka Nin’s Harp Concerto is a tribute to his mother — a woman losing her memories, but not her strength. Through shimmering harp lines and a quiet inner song, the piece traces her resilience, her love, and the life she continues to carry inside.
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On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Satoshi Yagisawa’s Clarinet Concerto doesn’t just spotlight the soloist — it weaves them into a vibrant sound world of contrast and color. Intimate, expressive, and thrillingly fast, it’s a standout in today’s wind repertoire.Then: What if a fugue could swing with jazz harmony? Or a Medieval chant twist in on itself through microtonal layers? In Contrapuntal Forms, Juri Seo turns centuries of technique into a living, breathing, and beautifully unruly sonic ecosystem. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Inspired by dance, Daniel Pesca’s Gestures of Grace explores movement in sound — spinning, gliding, and unfolding with a sense of elegance and surprise. It’s a vibrant duo for flute and piano, written as a tribute to a long musical friendship.Then: The double bass takes center stage in Sarah Louise Bassingthwaighte’s Concerto for Double Bass, a sweeping three-movement work that explores sorrow, humor, and catharsis. From haunting harmonics to cheeky pizzicato to a blazing finale, it’s a full-spectrum portrait of sound and feeling. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Field recordings, flowing strings, and blues-infused melodies shape Trevor Weston’s Legacy Works. These reimagined spirituals, from There is a Balm in Gilead to Run to Jesus, blur the lines between tradition and transformation.Then: What does up sound like? D. Riley Nicholson explores the idea from every angle in his piece UP — spiraling up the circle of fifths, building energy, and tumbling through dizzying piano textures that never stop climbing. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Beneath the forest floor, trees and fungi share a secret language — exchanging nutrients through delicate underground pathways. That symbiotic relationship comes to life in Wood Wide Web II by Miriama Young, where marimba and flute trace an imagined conversation between roots and mycelium.Then: Thierry Escaich’s Double Concerto for oboe and violin is a spirited dialogue between friends — rooted in late-night chamber sessions and shared improvisations. At its heart is a shimmering homage to J.S. Bach, with counterpoint that ripples, refracts, and dances between the two soloists. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: A tender farewell, a storm of emotion, and a swirl of nostalgia — Isidora Žebeljan’s final work, Three Curious Loves, is a violin concerto that moves from gentle lyricism to wild, virtuosic energy. It’s a deeply intimate piece that feels like memory set to music.Then: Hayden Carruth’s Emergency Haying is a poem about labor — about the hard, physical work of tending land. But composer Libby Larsen saw something deeper: a quiet meditation on injustice, on lives shaped by weather, by price, by need. Her setting of the poem is raw and grounded, like the earth it comes from. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Hear music by Valerie Coleman that embodies the common threads of community and empathy, reminding us that we are one people; a violin and flute duo by Carlos Simon that's stir crazy; and a piece for two saxophones by Katahj Copley called K-R-O-N-O.Then: Hear Lalin by Nathalie Joachim — a piece conceived under the moon and stars on her family’s farm in the Haitian countryside; Sunny X by Tyondai Braxton, continuing his experiments with electronics and live percussionists; and pieces for saxophone by Shelley Washington and Evan Williams. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Ljova’s Cellostatus imagines what scrolling through social media might sound like. A plucked groove pulls us in, giving way to fragments of danger, romance, and reflection — even a final movement where the soloist plays just one note.Then: One of pianist and composer Daniel Pesca’s earliest memories is hearing his mother sing. That memory shaped his new album, Walk with me, my joy — a deeply personal collection of music about memory, connection, and finding yourself in others. Daniel will join Tyler to discuss the album on the next Modern Notebook. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Five rhythms — fume-fume, djabara, kenkeni, and more — collide and align in Evan Williams’ Cycles. Inspired by African and Afro-Cuban bell patterns, the piece uses a fast-paced additive technique that loops, shifts, and locks into place. It’s both hypnotic and full of drive.Then: “I want to be the force which is truly for good.” Those words from John Coltrane drive The Force for Good, Michael Fiday’s pulsing tribute to Coltrane’s legacy. Inspired by Giant Steps and shaped by the events of 2020, it’s rhythmically intense and spiritually charged. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: What does space sound like? Deirdre McKay’s Mr Shah Stares to the Heavens captures the tension between cosmic silence and the richness of sound on Earth — a quiet meditation through music.Then: Full of driving rhythms and striking textures, Errollyn Wallen’s Violin Concerto is bold and unpredictable. A single, extended movement gives the violinist room to push against every boundary. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Reinaldo Moya’s Minnesota Suite paints three vivid scenes: towering red pines, the deep stillness of lake country, and the open sweep of prairie. It’s a musical journey across the state he’s called home for nearly a decade.Then: Jazz, rock, and Armenian folk all shape Tigran Hamasyan’s Sonata for Percussion. It’s music that grooves and challenges — built from asymmetrical patterns that never lose their melodic core. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: From Egyptian mythology to NASA’s golden record, Trevor Weston’s Stars explores the human fascination with the cosmos. Inspired by a poem by Robert Hayden, the piece moves through constellations, frequencies, the blues, and imagined cosmic music.Then: Whispers, trills, and wordless textures — Wang Lu’s At Which Point reimagines the voice through surreal poetry by Forrest Gander. It’s music full of tension and strange beauty, moving from the surreal to the luminous. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Highways, winter landscapes, a honking horn before disappearing into the distance — Henry Dorn’s “Mid-Michigan Miniatures” captures the feeling of driving across Michigan. It’s music rooted in travel, family, and the slow quiet of pandemic life.Then: Restless, layered, and rhythmically charged — Ken Thomson’s Uneasy lives up to its name. The music builds in long, sweeping gestures that clash, collide, and dissolve into near silence before rising again.
