How Fun Can Fuel a Composing Career with Marc Mellits

And new micro/Maker episodes featuring Phong Tran and Ania Vu

Author

Tyler Kline
May 30, 2025

🍃 Loose Leaf Transmissions – Weekly Dispatch

As you may (or may not) know, the guests I feature on music/Maker are always by invitation. There’s no grand system behind it, either. Just a long list of composers whose work I admire, most of whom I know personally. And I usually just reach out and see if they want to hang out for a bit… on the record, I guess you could say.

That’s all to say two things:
One, when I first met composer Marc Mellits, I knew I had to have him on the show.
And two, after recording our conversation back in April, I knew he had to be the first guest of this new series of episodes.

I really love this conversation. It was a blast getting to know Marc, and honestly, two hours wasn’t enough. But at least now I know I can hit him up for a good hang next time I’m in Chicago.

Okay, so yes: I think you’re going to love this episode. You’ll also find a lot to enjoy in this week’s micro/Maker episodes with Phong Tran and Ania Vu — from channeling emotion into music, to finding ways (often in vain) to stop time through composition.

🎧 New on the Feed

🎙 music/Maker with Tyler Kline

Now streaming: How Fun Can Fuel a Composing Career with Marc Mellits

Composer Marc Mellits is one of the most frequently performed living American composers, known for his rhythmically vibrant, vividly orchestrated, and viscerally engaging music. His works have been commissioned by Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and many more, and are performed around the world.

In this episode, Mellits traces his creative path from improvising at the piano as a kid to becoming a leading voice in contemporary music. He and host Tyler Kline discuss the value of beautifully engraved scores, why writing music that’s fun to play has fueled his success, and how his connection to Romania has shaped both his personal and artistic life.

For more, visit marcmellits.com.

New episodes every other Thursday. Subscribe now!

🎙 micro/Maker

micro/Maker 005: Resisting Time Through Music (featuring Ania Vu)

Ania Vu shares how personal hardship shaped her relationship with time, leading her to write music that resists forward motion and draws from poetic pacing and the natural world.

micro/Maker 006: Distilling Emotion Through Form (featuring Phong Tran)

Phong Tran talks about how architecture and emotion guide his creative process, using a loop of improvisation, sketching, and reduction to translate feeling into form.

Episodes are released every Tuesday and Friday. Subscribe now!

🔜 Coming Up Soon

Next week on micro/Maker you’ll hear from Joshua Mallard and Carlynn Crosby:

Composer Joshua Mallard reflects on the value of being a creative “chameleon” and how exploring adjacent fields like game or film music can offer composers greater artistic freedom, while writer Carlynn Crosby shares why empathy, cultural awareness, and writing with care are central to her practice… and how those values are becoming harder to protect in an increasingly distracted world.

By the way, I’m really excited about some of the interviews I have coming up, including composers Beyza Yazgan, Michael Frazier, Annika Socolofsky, and Nicolás Lell Benavides, scheduled for the first half of June. Look for these episodes to be released later this year!

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Thanks, as always, for joining me. May your work be as satisfying to make as it is to complete.