I had the honor to have a truly special conversation with one of new music’s most active and significant grass-roots community advocates, composer Tyler Kline of Loose Leaf Transmissions, who has made some remarkable music, while simultaneously producing both his radio program Modern Notebook for a number of years (he recently decided to end production to focus on other projects), and his invaluable podcast Music Maker, where he interviews the widest array of composers and music makers from across the globe.
Tyler is a fantastic interviewer, and the space and generosity he allows for all his conversations is rare. I encourage you to listen to subscribe to both his podcast and his newsletter to get the full “music maker” ethos experience! To listen to our expansive conversation, where we talk about my growing up (in what now feels like the Stone Age), remembering my great grandparents’ backyard in Brooklyn, my first compositions, hearing my first piece of contemporary music live (Joan Tower’s “Sequoia” with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic in the early 1980s), surviving Curtis, quitting composing, coming back to composing, unpacking what it means to do what we do and what we are told “success” is supposed to sound and look like, and why “getting things” as a composer is problematic with the given decision structures that are in place, visit Tyler’s Music Maker webpage, where you can hear our conversation and peruse all the other Music Maker episodes as well. Enjoy!