composer
Tyler Kline Composer EPK
Welcome, and thanks for your interest in my work. Below you’ll find everything you need for press coverage, promotional materials, or program books — including bios, headshots, audio samples, and more.
For a Dropbox link that contains select materials, click here.
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Bio Information | Artist Statement | Headshots | Work Samples | Press | Contact
Bio Information
Usage Note:
The bios provided below may be reprinted or quoted in part for promotional, editorial, or program use. Please credit the source as “Tyler Kline, composer.” If applicable, please include a link to www.tylerklinemusic.com. For edits beyond basic formatting or length, or for a custom version, feel free to get in touch.
Short Bio (~90 words)
Tyler Kline (b. 1991; he/him) is a composer, audio engineer, and radio broadcaster whose music explores impermanence, memory, and the subtle poetry of things slipping from view. Deeply influenced by the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, his work spans chamber, orchestral, and electroacoustic forms and has been performed in 18 countries. Tyler is the host and producer of Living Classical, a nationally distributed radio program showcasing music by today’s composers, and the founder of Loose Leaf Transmissions, home to the podcast music/Maker. He lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Susanna, and their cat, Tofu.
Medium Bio (~280 words)
Tyler Kline (b. 1991; he/him) is a composer, audio engineer, and radio broadcaster whose music has been described as “crafting inventive sound worlds” (Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review) and “achieving a delicate balance of intensity and grace” (The Road to Sound). Deeply influenced by the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi – an embrace of impermanence, imperfection, and transience – his work often explores the subtle poetry of things falling apart or slipping from view.
His music spans chamber, orchestral, electroacoustic, and solo forms, and has been performed across the United States and in 18 countries worldwide. Recent works include TATTOO (2025), a solo piano meditation on nostalgia and musical time; Rebirth: An Eternal Grove (2021), a string quartet for Tokyo-based ensemble musicGROVE; and liveoak (2020), a solo clarinet work inspired by the growth patterns of trees. His music has been featured at events including the World Saxophone Congress (Spain), ClarinetFest (Ireland), and the Penn State New-Music Festival.
Tyler’s work has been recognized by ASCAP, the Ohio Arts Council, and the 5th Ise-Shima International Composition Competition. Through 2026-27, he will be in residence at programs including Studio Kura (Japan), NES Artist Residency (Iceland), the Hambidge Center (Georgia, USA), and the Bischoff Inn (Pennsylvania, USA).
An advocate for living composers, Tyler hosts and produces Living Classical, a nationally syndicated radio program airing on ten stations and streaming on Mixcloud. He also leads Loose Leaf Transmissions, a media platform rooted in public radio ethos and home to music/Maker, a podcast exploring artistic process and creative philosophy through longform interviews.
Originally from rural Kentucky, Tyler lives in Cincinnati with his wife, composer Susanna Hancock, and their cat, Tofu. He travels frequently and documents his life through 35mm photography.
Full Length Bio (~620 words)
Tyler Kline (b. 1991; he/him) is a composer, audio engineer, and radio broadcaster whose music has been described as crafting inventive sound worlds (Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review) and achieving a delicate balance of intensity and grace (The Road to Sound). Deeply influenced by the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi – which embraces impermanence, imperfection, and transience – Tyler’s music often explores the subtle poetry of things falling apart or slipping from view. He employs extended techniques to obscure texture, silence and rhythmic dissonance to fracture time, and fleeting gestures to evoke memory and the natural world.
His work spans chamber, orchestral, electroacoustic, and solo forms, and has been performed across the United States and in 18 countries, including Japan, Germany, Brazil, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. He is also active as a collaborator beyond traditional music circles, having worked with chefs, dancers, and writers, and is especially drawn to alternative models of concert presentation that foster intimacy, informality, and cross-disciplinary dialogue.
Recent compositions include West of the Sun (2019), an orchestral work inspired by the surreal and melancholic writing of Haruki Murakami; liveoak (2020), a solo clarinet piece that maps the fractal growth of a tree through microtonality and multiphonics; Rebirth: An Eternal Grove (2021), a string quartet commissioned by Tokyo-based ensemble musicGROVE; and TATTOO (2025), a solo piano meditation on nostalgia, memory, and the elasticity of musical time.
Tyler’s music has been presented at festivals and conferences around the world, including the World Saxophone Congress (Spain), European Clarinet Congress (Italy), ClarinetFest (Ireland), and the Festival Internacional de la Guitarra Eléctrica Contemporánea (Chile). In the U.S., his music has appeared at events such as the Penn State New-Music Festival and Symposium, International Trombone Festival, University of Louisville Guitar Festival, and the Music Teachers National Association Conference. His music has been released on labels including Neuma Records and Ravello Records.
His work has been recognized by ASCAP, the Hillsborough Arts Council (Tampa, FL), and the Ohio Arts Council, most recently earning a 2024 Ohio Individual Excellence Award in Music Composition. In 2025, he was awarded a Special Prize in the 5th Ise-Shima International Composition Competition for his solo piano work TATTOO. His upcoming residencies through 2026 include the Bischoff Inn Micro-Residency (Pennsylvania, USA), Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences (Georgia, USA), NES Artist Residency (Iceland), and Studio Kura (Japan).
Beyond composing, Tyler is committed to nurturing the work of living composers through curation, dialogue, and broadcast. He is the founder of Loose Leaf Transmissions, a media platform rooted in the ethos of public radio, specializing in high-quality storytelling for both digital and broadcast audiences. Its flagship podcast, music/Maker, features conversations with composers and artists about process, philosophy, and path. Tyler also hosts and produces Living Classical with Tyler Kline, a nationally syndicated radio program airing on ten stations across the U.S. and streaming on Mixcloud, offering weekly deep dives into adventurous and emotionally resonant music by today’s composers. From 2019 to 2025, he was the host and producer of Modern Notebook, a nationally syndicated program that featured more than 2,000 works by over 1,000 composers, with a strong emphasis on underrepresented voices.
Originally from rural Kentucky, Tyler earned his Bachelor of Arts from Morehead State University, where he studied euphonium and held a multi-year undergraduate research fellowship. He received his Master of Music in Composition from the University of South Florida, studying with Dr. Baljinder Sekhon.
Tyler lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Susanna, who is also a composer, and their cat, Tofu. He is drawn to travel and considers it the most thrilling aspect of being alive. He’s a curious, enthusiastic eater who gravitates toward unfamiliar or experimental dishes, and he enjoys documenting his life and travels on 35mm film.
Artist Statement
My music grows out of sustained attention. I compose as a way of registering what I notice as I move through the world – shifts in texture, light, atmosphere, and time – and of making sense of what accumulates when I slow down long enough to listen. Composition isn’t a way of documenting my life, exactly, but it is how experience filters through me and takes shape.
I don’t work from fixed systems or inherited frameworks. I work from sound, intuition, and careful listening. Much of my process happens before anything resembles a finished piece: lingering on a single pitch, repeating a gesture until it reveals something new, letting small details guide larger decisions. These early traces – fragments, diagrams, observations – often carry as much weight for me as the music that eventually emerges from them.
My music tends to sit between the experimental and the approachable, though accessibility is never about simplification. Instead, I think in terms of entry points. Familiar harmonies may coexist with unfamiliar sounds; emotionally charged gestures may sit inside less predictable forms. I’m interested in how listeners find their way into a piece, and in creating conditions where curiosity can unfold without requiring specialized knowledge.
Time plays a central role in how I think about form. I’m drawn to music that unfolds patiently, where silences linger, and arrival points are allowed to breathe. Rather than moving linearly, the music often hovers, circles, or waits. I think of pieces as collections of gestures – sometimes delicate, sometimes stark – that gradually gather into a larger shape, much the way environments reveal themselves through repeated, attentive encounters.
The Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi – with its embrace of impermanence, imperfection, and instability – subtly underpins much of my work. I’m comfortable letting things feel incomplete or slightly worn, allowing decay and change to remain audible. Even when the music is precise, I’m rarely interested in polishing it smooth.
In recent years, I’ve also been relearning how to stay emotionally connected to the music I write. For a time, I held the belief that emotion didn’t belong in serious composition. Letting go of that idea has shifted my relationship to sound. Now, I’m interested in resonance that emerges through texture, breath, and pacing: through the way a single sound can subtly reshape a listener’s sense of time.
I don’t think of my work as moving toward a fixed destination. Each piece is part of an ongoing inquiry; an attempt to stay responsive to sound, to place, and to my own intuition as it changes. What matters most to me is making music that feels honest and attentive, and that leaves enough space for others to locate their own experience within it.
Headshots
Usage Note:
The headshots below are available for press, publicity, or program use. Please credit the photographer as Susanna Hancock whenever possible. For alternate resolutions or additional photos, feel free to get in touch.
Color Headshots
B&W Headshots
Recent Work Samples
The pieces below offer a glimpse into my recent work and reflect aspects of my current artistic voice and my current interests. These selections are not exhaustive, but rather representative.
For a full list of compositions, including program notes and instrumentation details, click here.
TATTOO (2022 – 2025)
solo piano / ca. 20 min.
TATTOO is both a metaphor for personal transformation and a literal reflection of the tattooing process. Structured in two parts—Part 1 as line work, Part 2 as shading—the piece mirrors how tattoos mark identity through repetition, texture, and gradual evolution. Like adding ink to skin, the music reveals something truer as it unfolds.
More information here.
rebirth: an eternal grove | 生まれ変わった魂・永遠の木立 (2021)
string quartet / ca. 20 min.
Commissioned by musicGROVE in Tokyo, rebirth: an eternal grove draws on the quiet presence of nature within the city—seasonal change, flowing water, and the stillness of traditional spaces. Structured in four gradually evolving sections, the piece imagines a grove transforming over time, while also marking a personal return to creative life after a long period of doubt. The music moves between texture and melody, reality and dream, with the aim of evoking something both ancient and quietly surreal.
More information here.
Eight Aspects (2020)
violin + piano / ca. 23 min.
Inspired by the moon as a symbol of illusion, subconscious thought, and divine ambiguity, Eight Aspects is a modular cycle that explores gesture-based variation across shifting musical terrains. Rather than developing a theme melodically, the piece transforms textures and motifs—sliding intervals, harmonic washes, and ritual-like patterns—across movements that may be performed linearly or interwoven throughout a program. The result is a quiet illusion of unity, where contrasting movements reflect and distort one another like phases of the moon.
More information here.
liveoak (2020)
solo clarinet / ca. 13 min.
Commissioned by a 51-member consortium, liveoak traces a gradual transformation inspired by the shape and lifespan of live oak trees—beginning with subterranean, long-tone “roots” and rising toward delicate, leaflike tremolos. The music evolves fractally, with gestures unfolding across time in subtle, impermanent ways. Drawing from the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, liveoak reflects both the endurance and transience found in the natural world.
More information here.
West of the Sun (2019)
full orchestra / ca. 10 min.
West of the Sun is inspired by the writing of Haruki Murakami—especially South of the Border, West of the Sun—and explores the idea of genesis: of stepping into a fully formed world. Structured in five connected sections, the piece unfolds through a dual-timeline approach—one thread unraveling from dense rhythmic gestures into silence, and another growing from a single pitch into a full chorale. The final section, blood orange, is dedicated to my partner, Susanna Hancock, and reflects a broader opening in my life toward food culture, ritual, and the quiet influence of those who shape how we experience the world.
More information here.
Press
Below are selected press quotes and appearances that reflect how others have engaged with my work—through reviews, interviews, and public programming.
Selected Press Quotes
“What is remarkable and in part transcends what words can express is the abundance of inventive pianisms, all inspired and thought-out, with a certain tenderness at times and other times a dynamic rugged quality that is both whimsical and serious at the same time.”
— Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
“What’s most striking about Orchard is its gentle balance of delicate and virtuosic moments, making space for both intense rigor and soft grace—each piece is a tiny package that treats silence and boisterousness with equal footing.”
— The Road to Sound
“Orchard can be a beautifully unobtrusive insight for pianists into landscapes they may not encounter with their instrument's teachers... It strikes anyone that Kline takes a somewhat punk approach to composition.”
— Magazin Uni (Czech Republic)
“Though Kline does sport a somewhat punk attitude in 'making a point', displaying an idea, and that's that then. No lengthy doodling around. 'Here's something to think about'—slap into your face. But even this is not quite correct, as you do find that 1 minute 30 is long enough to present an idea of a melody and rhythm and further develop it.”
— Vital Weekly
“The charm of Orchard lies principally in its disarmingly unassuming character and in its refusal to have a one-fits-all label affixed to it.”
— Rafael’s Music Notes
“Boynton said the intonations in ‘Pistachio,’ a selection from Orchard by Tyler Kline, ‘made me sit up in my seat.’”
— The Daily Collegian (Penn State)
Select Press Appearances
May 15, 2025 – Podcast, music/Maker with Tyler Kline "How I Found My Way as a Composer (So Far)
April 10, 2025 — Blog Feature, The Insightful Creative with Laura Lentz "Tyler Kline: Silence, space, and building a universe of sound for listeners to live in."
May 28, 2024 — Interview Segment on Where We Live, hosted by Catherine Shen, on Connecticut Public Radio.
Oct. 14, 2022 — Interview, No Dead Guys with Rhonda Rizzo "Orchard: an interview with composer Tyler Kline."
Mar. 27, 2022 — Podcast Interview, 1 Track Podcast with Anthony Joseph Lanman.
Contact
Let's connect!
I’m always open to thoughtful conversation, collaboration, or just staying in touch.
You can find me here:
• Instagram: sound_assembler
• Facebook: tylerklinecomposer
• Bluesky: @tylerkline.bsky.social
• YouTube: @tylerklinecomposer
• Loose Leaf Transmissions
For commissions, collaborations, performance inquiries, or press requests, feel free to reach out: