composer
Tyler Kline – Interactive Portfolio
Selected works and materials representing my current creative practice.
Artist Overview
My work explores music as an environment: slowly evolving spaces shaped by stillness, resonance, and attentive listening.
I’m increasingly interested in how sound, place, and perception converge, often drawing from natural forms, subtle gestures, and the textures of everyday landscapes. Alongside my compositional work, I integrate analog photography, film, and journaling into my creative practice as parallel methods of observing and documenting the world.
These materials form the foundation for my current direction, where sound and image inform one another in subtle, iterative ways.
Selected Music Compositions
TATTOO (2022–2025) | solo piano
TATTOO is a meditation on marking, memory, and transformation, modeled on the physical act of tattooing. The two-part form moves from line-work to shading, beginning with single pitches in graphic, pulse-free notation and gradually growing into layered textures and harmonic density. The work unfolds slowly, emphasizing repetition, spaciousness, and emergent detail – inviting the listener into a space where sound accumulates the way lived experience does.
TATTOO performed by pianist Eunmi Ko @ Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH | September 2025
Stillness left from empty husks (2017; rev. 2025) | oboe, clarinet, bassoon
Stillness left from empty husks is a multi-movement work exploring states of stillness, unrest, and memory through shifting textures and extended techniques. Each movement investigates a distinct physical or metaphorical idea: lattice-like intersecting lines, cadential gestures that continually “end” without resolution, and in the fourth movement, breath- and bellows-like writing that evokes the mechanics of an accordion. Across the piece, familiar musical tropes coexist with more alien material, creating a landscape where surface stability and internal turbulence continually trade places.
Stillness left from empty hsusks performed by Ritual Action
@ Illinois State University, Normal, IL | September 2025
liveoak (2020; film: 2025) | solo clarinet with original film
This self-made short film follows the slow transformation of a fallen Persian silk tree across a single day, using light, texture, and repeated imagery to trace subtle shifts in atmosphere. Filmed around a stump left behind after a spring storm, the work mirrors the pacing and evolution of my solo clarinet piece liveoak: returning to similar shots as they brighten, fade, and recast themselves. The film sits between documentation and observation, reflecting an emerging strand of my practice that focuses on slow noticing, place, and the quiet changes that occur over time.
Rebirth: An Eternal Grove (2021) | string quartet
rebirth: an eternal grove is a single-movement work that moves through four seasonal “states,” each marked by shifting textures, color, and pacing. Harmonics and rising gestures evoke spring light; denser, more humid writing shapes the summer section; autumn dissolves into blurred harmonies and glissandi; and winter brings a quieter, suspended atmosphere. The piece reflects my ongoing interest in natural processes, gradual transformation, and fractal-like growth – small gestures reappearing in altered forms across the work.
Rebirth: An Eternal Grove performed by violinists Sage Park and Bryson Karrer, violist Maeve Whelan, and cellist Jaemin Lee.
Photography and Visual Practice
Analog (35mm) photography has become an essential part of my creative process. I use the camera as a way of documenting subtle spaces, seasonal changes, and overlooked textures in the environments I move through. These images often serve as starting points for musical ideas, or as parallel studies in pacing, light, and atmosphere.
Journaling / Field Notes
My journaling tends to happen in fragments: short notes, sketches, and observations gathered during walks, travel, or while working with sound and image. I don’t keep a strict daily journal; instead, I collect ideas as they surface: a pacing thought next to a photograph, a texture I hear noted beside a musical sketch. Over time these small pieces become a record of how I’m noticing the world, and I’m interested in deepening this form of reflective documentation in future residency settings.
Creative Direction: Residencies/ Travel / Place
My current work is rooted in place-based listening and slow, perceptual attention: responding to landscapes, weather, and the subtle atmospheres of the environments I move through. Travel and residency time allow me to work at a different pace, gathering photographs, musical sketches, and small notes that eventually shape larger pieces. I’m most interested in quiet, spacious settings where sound, image, and observation can develop gradually, informing one another over time.