Now streaming: Living Classical Episode 16 for April 12-18, 2026

On this edition of Living Classical with Tyler Kline: Learning to be fully present in a fast-paced world inspired Emma O'Halloran to write Only Moments to Live. The piece is structured as a dance between saxophone soloist and ensemble: gestures are picked up and expanded, with improvisational sections where everyone must listen and respond.

Then: The movement of a spiral is usually depicted going downward, linked to anxiety and negative thought. But composer Ben Nobuto wanted to invert that. His piece Hope Spiral spirals upward instead, a euphoric feedback loop reflecting on how to renew joy and wonder so you can fall in love with the world over and over again.

Also featuring music by Anna Lapwood, Nicolás Lell Benavides, Arooj Aftab, Somei Satoh, Lillian Yee, Akshaya Avril Tucker, Alex Temple, Daniel Wohl, and René Kuwan.

View the playlist & listen: https://www.looseleaftransmissions.com/post/living-classical-with-tyler-kline-for-april-12-18-2026

Follow & stream anytime on Mixcloud.

Episode 099: Rethinking What “Composer” Means (featuring Chris Opperman)

Chris Opperman grew up emailing guitarist Mike Keneally to dissect impossible tuplets and entire albums, leading him to question how we define "composer" and why he resists exclusivity in favor of space for everyone's expression.

Episode 100: Learning the Business of Being a Composer (featuring Baljinder Sekhon)

Baljinder Sekhon discusses why career-building, orchestration, and business literacy aren't extras but essential parts of being a composer, refusing to separate the act of composing from the broader life of a composer.

Episode 101: Finding the Middle Path (featuring Caterina Schembri)

Caterina Schembri traces her journey from intense conservatory training in Bogotá through a rigorous, dogma-driven composition program and a film-scoring master's that opened new sonic possibilities, eventually carving out a middle ground shaped by her own voice rather than academic or market pressures.

Episodes are released every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Subscribe now!

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Next week on the music/Maker podcast, I’ll be joined by composer, new music advocate, and creative entrepreneur Mendel Lee.

In this conversation, Mendel and Tyler trace a journey that is anything but linear: from new age piano pieces at high school talent shows, to drum corps, to a composition degree, to three years in corporate IT, to over a decade directing the Tulane marching band, to a leap of faith into full-time composing.

They talk about the panic-written piece that finally made Mendel believe in his own musical instincts, the moment he stopped keeping his marching band identity separate from his concert work, what it really means to go from saying "I have a composition degree" to "I am a composer," and why his goal has never actually been for people to like his music.

Available to stream beginning Thursday, April 23!

Coming up on Living Classical (streaming Sunday, April 19): Alex Dowling's Inner Orbits reimagines melodies and ideas from a previous electroacoustic work for string quartet. It’s a compositional move from electronic to acoustic forces that he describes as refreshing, the constraints guiding him toward new ways of thinking.

Then, Veronique Vaka's Erda traces the geologic narrative of the 1996 eruption under Iceland's Vatnajökull glacier, noting that glaciers are simultaneously timeless and ephemeral – inscribing the prehistoric past but threatening to vanish, bridging deep time and human time.

Plus, music by Kevin Lau, Melaine Dalibert, Nathan Hudson, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Thomas Adès, Viet Cuong, Christopher Cerrone, Coral Douglas, and Laura Hyland.

Listen on Mixcloud or at livingclassicalradio.com beginning Sunday, April 19!

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