Tyler Kline

At long last! I’m excited to finally share a recording of my latest solo piano piece, TATTOO, performed by Eunmi Ko in Orlando just a little over a week ago. I am eternally grateful to Eunmi for not only bringing this piece to life, time and again, and playing it all over, but for her guidance that helped me elevate the musc beyond what I thought it could be. I’ve said plenty about the piece over the past year, so I will let the music speak for itself, but it’s a work that I’m seriously proud of. Please watch, enjoy, share! I have to add: there is absolutely no universe where sharing a brief excerpt of this piece feels right to me, so be sure to check the full thing out when you have time. Both score follower and live performance video streaming on my YouTube channel, or at the link in my bio.

I’m excited to share what comes next. Beginning December 7, I’ll be launching Living Classical with Tyler Kline: an independently produced weekly program devoted to living composers and the evolving landscape of contemporary classical sound. The show builds on the work I began with Modern Notebook, with more space for deep curation, narrative framing, and occasional perspectives from my podcast music/Maker. The first episode will be available to stream on Sunday, December 7 at livingclassicalradio.com (where you’ll also find playlists and ways to listen). Living Classical will also continue to air on public radio stations across the U.S. You can follow the new account at @livingclassical.radio . And if you’d like to support the work directly – including early access to each episode through Patreon – you’ll find everything here: patreon.com/LooseLeafTransmissions Listener support helps make independent, artist-centered broadcasting possible. Thank you for supporting Modern Notebook all these years. I’m looking forward to building this next chapter with intention, clarity, and a lot of care.

🗣️new headshots!!🗣️website revamp!!🗣️ Probably way overdue since my most recent headshots were from ~5 years ago. I felt like I needed some sort of new vibe with these, so I entrusted @susannahancock with my Minolta X700, and we ended up with these 35mm shots on Cinestill 400D… with just a little bit of touch em ups. . In addition, be sure to visit my freshly revamped website, - I’ve been working hard on a variety of updates: - The addition of an Electronic Press Kit (EPK) - A space for my 35mm film photography - A slight redesign of my sheet music store. - General updates and rewrites of some materials. . 📸 Susanna Hancock 💇‍♂️ Anna Huffka @onaruckus / @theikimovement 📍 the [iki] movement in Lexington KY . #composer #musiccomposition #contemporarycomposer #composition

On this day 3 years ago, we said goodbye to Peggie. Losing a pet (as an adult anyway) is a surreal experience to begin with, but losing Peg felt like losing a soul mate. And in thinking about the fleeting nature of this wise and goofy creature, I’m ready to share some details about the music I’m currently writing. TIGERBELLY is my attempt to not simply memorialize Peg in a composition, but almost like… imprint her spirit into sound in some way. I hesitate to use the word “sonify” her, but it’s probably the closest way to describe it. I’m glad to be working with Don-Paul Kahl @donpaul.saxo on this piece, and it’s yielded some pretty interesting music so far, and pushed me way outside of my comfort zone (of course, in the best way). Written for alto saxophone and piano, TIGERBELLY moves through four movements that represent Peggie’s life. The first movement, “An Act of Imagining,” is imagining the first five years of her life before I adopted her; the second movement, “An Act of Remembering,” is our life together; “A Transfiguration,” the third movement, is the moment of death; and the final movement is only saxophone, representing life without her. Writing this piece has been and continues to be a strange experience. I can sense I’m nearing the end of the process, but it still feels unapproachable. I have been largely emotionally detached while composing it, too, and yet it has been extremely difficult and even exhausting to produce. I hope it’s a piece worthy of the time and attention it will take for a listener to experience it. I hope it honors Peggie in the right ways and carries on her wisdom and awkwardness beyond my memories. Swipe through to listen to some clips (some of me playing piano, some of MIDI - sorry!), some favorite pics of Peg, and some excerpts of the music itself. Also! I’ve got a bigger break down of my ideas within movement 1 and 2 in the comment section (because of course I’m too wordy and social media don’t like that).

Just a quick pair of performances of my work this month in May to let yall know about, but I am especially excited about the US Premiere of my string quartet, Rebrith: An Eternal Grove - next weekend in Indy with the Quartet Collective / @soundecologies !! Should be excellent - I’m very proud of this piece that I wrote nearly 5 years ago for @musicgrove , and it’s only ever been performed in Tokyo, so if you’re around please come! And if you need more details about the program shoot me a message. ✨ PS: as always the images in these posts were photographed by me 🥸 constantly trying to figure out how to integrate photography more into my work as a composer…

Some long overdue 35mm shots I took while at the @bischoffinn micro-residency in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, March 2026. Most of these are from Tamaqua, but a few in Pottsville and State College. I shot 4 rolls of film over the week, so probably more photos to come! I love searching for all sorts of ephemera and no shortage of that throughout Central PA. Lots of great landscapes to share, too..

In community among the fiddleheads and a wonderful cohort of artists for the next 10 or so days at @hambidgecenter - feeling lucky to call this place home even briefly, and excited to see what sort of music gets made ✨always good to be greeted by the words of Wendell Berry, and I made sure to pack lots of reading, too (in two languages even!).

I spent the last 30 minutes trying to find the right words to describe how this photo makes me feel, and I’m not coming up with anything that feels even halfway adequate. It’s my favorite photo I took in the month of March, while driving home from Pennsylvania. As always, 35mm/Minolta X700.

Bit of a sparse month of activities coming up in April, but they are hefty ones nonetheless: I’m excited to be headed to North Georgia a week from today for my @hambidgecenter residency - two weeks where I’ll be spending more time with my big saxophone piece I’m working on, and hopefully carving out time for additional explorations (artistic and otherwise). On April 11, @eunmi_camp takes TATTOO to NYC for the first time - friends in New York, I hope you’ll go and message me for additional details! I’m so excited she’ll be performing this piece in NYC. Finally, in Boston on April 27 @aaron_buede conducts the Boston University Trombone Choirs for the world premiere of Bouquet I – well, like the 2nd world premiere of that piece, since it’s an adaptation of the piano music I wrote for Aaron and @jennychu_617 ’s wedding in Quebec last year. More stuff on the horizon to share, and until then… I’ll be cookin’

It seems as though Spring is here to stay, so here’s a small collection of winter shots I captured from December through February. I’m not sure what there is to say about these photos, but I will say that I feel that the older I get, the more I appreciate the deepening of darkness and the (sometimes bitter) cold of Winter. I find myself actually getting annoyed when I hear people complain about the cold weather - which says more about me than it says about any of them. Honestly, I guess I’ve just come to terms with what Winter seems to offer me: a chance to pause, and pay attention to what’s around me, and figure out what’s next. I can’t tell you how many times I stood outside in the cold this past season just to see how each day’s sunset changed depending on the subtle difference in the position of the sun in the sky. Or even something like taking the trash out at night, and lingering for a moment in the near-zero temperatures to just stare at the night sky mixed with the puff of my breath. And of course, as you can see.. plenty of snow (which I very much welcomed!). Maybe the conclusion I’m coming to is that when we (or at least I) treat Winter for what it is - a chance to take a step back and pause - it makes the subsequent seasons feel fuller and more alive, in a way. Not to say I didn’t have a productive few months, but I’m definitely paying more attention to, and valuing more and more, this type of ebb and flow as life goes on. All to say: I don’t know if that perspective shows up in these photos in any way, but it was certainly where my head was at when I took them. A variety of stocks and cameras here: Minolta X700 and Konica IIIa, and I believe Kodacolor 100, UltraMax, and even some Lomography 92 (not a fan, but the texture of it is interesting at least).

Yet another announcement. Let’s work together, y’all!

It always feels a little weird to share things like this, but I feel so honored to have had such a wonderful profile written up about me by University of Minnesota-Morris student Catherine Van Wey @cat.vanwey , which has now been published in their Undergraduate Journal. So cool! Catherine interviewed me last fall for a class about the creative practice, and answering her questions really clarified a lot of aspects about my work for myself. I feel quite well-represented by what she gathered about me and put into words! Many thanks to @pianogirlann and @athenakildegaard for the invitation to participate their class 🙏