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.
-
Photo credit: Victoria Stevens.On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: In Listen to the Earth, James Grant takes us aboard Apollo 11 — from liftoff, through orbit, all the way to the lunar surface. Drawing from NASA transcripts, environmental texts, and his own poetic reflections, Grant’s music becomes a call to witness our planet’s beauty from space — and to care for it with everything we’ve got.Then: Inspired by a Mark Rothko painting, Anna Clyne’s Color Field imagines sound as color and color as sound — with musical movements tied to yellow, red, and orange. Each section draws from synesthesia and Scriabin’s color-pitch associations, blending warmth, fire, and calm into a vivid, sonic canvas. -
Photo credit: Astrid Ackermann.On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: With the earth as muse, Colin Jacobsen offers a musical tribute to Ruth Crawford Seeger in his piece A Short While to Be Here… — imagining the voice she might have found had she lived longer. Weaving together folk memories, modernist language, and the fleeting beauty of life on this fragile planet, his piece pulses with reverence for all who come and go.Then: Liza Lim’s cello concerto, A Sutured World, took shape through months of frustration and discovery — an act of sewing together broken fragments to reveal something whole and luminous. Like golden joins in shattered pottery, her music traces the line between damage and healing.
-
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. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face has dazzled audiences for three decades. Its vivid Dances have long been part of the orchestral repertoire — but the composer’s revised Three-piece Suite has never had a commercial release. Now, in its anniversary year, that moment has come.Then: Modern Notebook pays tribute to the late Sofia Gubaidulina, who passed away in March 2025. Her Triple Concerto explores three forces in music — attraction, repulsion, and the energy that binds them — all unfolding in a work of cosmic balance and depth. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Good and evil, reality and illusion — composer Melia Watras explores these intertwined opposites in “Doppelgänger Dances.” The piece plays with musical doubles and variations, drawn from her earlier composition William Wilson, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting tale of duality.Then: “Still Leaning Towards This Machine” — that’s the subtitle of Rune Glerup’s Clarinet Quintet, a piece shaped by influences from Beethoven and Boulez to Beckett and Bukowski. Across three movements, it shimmers with tension, breathes with stillness, and pulses with restless energy, blending acoustic and electronic textures. -
On the next Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: Called a “dream group” by The New York Times after just one concert, the ensemble Owls brings together members of Kronos Quartet and acclaimed soloists. Their debut album Rare Birds is built on joy, curiosity, and experimentation — ending with a 14-minute celebration of minimalism and 5/4 rhythm by Terry Riley.Then: A single chord for viola grew into something unexpected for composer Karin Rehnqvist — a piano improvisation, then an electronic voice that sounded like the sea. In her piece “I thought the sea would sing to me,” she explores the viola’s depths, from the warmth of the C string to shimmering quarter tones and playful musical gestures.
