Composer's Studio

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Drifting through falling air and tempests, we find ourselves in a musical world of unfinished introspection.  Do you think emotion in music is real?  Let’s find out. Join us on the Composer’s  Studio as we explore that question and more with award winning composer Douglas Knehans. 

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When one of your earliest memories is of your grandfather playing at Carnegie Hall, it is hard work just to carve out a place for yourself in your own family. Our guest, Composer David Serkin Ludwig does his namesake proud. Once named by NPR Music as one of the world’s “Top 100 Composers Under Forty,”  David’s choral work “The New Colossus,” opened the private prayer service for President Obama’s second inauguration. Based in the creative cauldron of Philadelphia’s hot contemporary music scene, David Serkin Ludwig is chair of composition at The Curtis Institute of Music where he is also director of Ensemble 20/21 and Curtis SummerFest. He holds positions and residencies with nearly two dozen orchestras and music festivals in the US and abroad, and still makes time for his wife, acclaimed violinist Bella Hristova, and their four cats.

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Composer David Kirkland Garner’s music is borne of an obsessive urge to take things apart, separate out the fragments of color, emotion, rhythm, and then reassemble it in a way that reveals new meaning and relevance. Grappling with the legacies of everything from the intimidating dominance of Beethoven’s place in the canon, to the confusing shame and nostalgia of his family’s Confederate past, Garner crafts exquisitely wrought transformations of everything from Bach violin sonatas to crackly field recordings from the Appalachian foothills. 

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Composer Elainie Lillios creates electroacoustic soundscapes reflecting her fascination with observing and manipulating the qualities of sound itself.  Come with Tarik and Anna on a journey to a world of dreams and memory at the edge of the Immeasurable Distance where those we have loved and lost reside. 

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We are so excited about the new release of Andrea Edith Moore's debut recording of Daniel Thomas Davis’ haunting and humorous work, Family Secrets: Kith & Kin. Set to texts of seven internationally renowned authors of the New South: Frances Mayes, Daniel Wallace, Allan Gurganus, Lee Smith, Randall Kenan, Michael Malone, and Jeffery Beam,  this series of interconnected dramatic portraits tell of murder, gossip, humor, regret, solace and ultimately…forgiveness. Get the inside story on this wonder new recording.

Learn more and get the album here: https://www.andreaedithmoore.com/copy-of-family-secrets

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Much of composer Chiayu Hsu’s music revolves around the poems, myths, States to hone her craft as a composer. She has found great success in the U.S., but her music reflects a divided heart. It is a collage of imagery and mood, telling stories and painting images full of affection for the place and the people she misses at home, while exploring the kaleidoscope of cultures and creative synergies that makes life and music making in the U.S. so irresistible. Join Tarik and Anna for this fascinating conversation about the sometimes uncomfortable journeys on which our musical dreams take us. and images she left behind when emigrating from Taiwan to the United 

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Beloved Raleigh pianist, pedagogue, and composer Lanette Lind did not set out to be a composer, but one commission led to another, and another, and another. As a masterful pianist, competent in many styles, Lanette does not subscribe to any one compositional technique or ethos--just that the music must serve the story. Whether writing for children or adults, she approaches her task like a storyteller looking for the  words that will cut through the distractions of the mind and reach straight into the heart.  What higher compliment can a composer receive than to capture the imaginations of children?

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Founding member of the New York based ensemble, Rhymes With Opera, composer George Tsz-Kwan Lam was born in Hong Kong, brought up in Massachusetts, and studied in some of the finest composition programs in North America. George’s music is all about exploring and documenting the musical aspects of place, whether in a tobacco factory turned performance space in Durham, North Carolina, or through interviews with emigrant musicians adapting their musical traditions to their new homelands. Joining Tarik Ghiradella and Anna Linvill from Hong Kong, George opens up about his fascination with places, individual journeys, and the relationship between language and music. We find out that the Medieval Latin poems of The Carmina Burana sound exquisite in Cantonese.

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Join Tarik and Anna for a great conversation with composer, Juan Pablo Contreras, a Latin GRAMMY®-nominated composer from Guadalajara, Mexico. In his music, Juan Pablo explores his joyful but complicated relationships with history, place, and his love for both Western classical and Mexican folk music, resulting in a musical journey full of joy, humor, and just a touch of violence. His works have been performed by major orchestras throughout Mexico, including, the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, the Salta and Córdoba Symphonies in Argentina, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and many others.

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Innovative North Carolina-based composer, artist, and educator, Brittany J. Green’s work explores new ways of looking at the relationships between audience and composer, sound and movement, form and function. Join Anna and Tarik for a generative discussion of computer programming in composition, music as metaphor, the productive dichotomy between tradition and disruptive new ideas, and how she, as a black, female composer, amplifies the unheard voices of her community through her work.