Erin Rogers is a saxophonist, composer, and improviser dedicated to new and experimental music. Her “decidedly future-oriented” music has been described as “whimsical, theatrical” (Brooklyn Vegan), “radical and refreshing” (Vital Weekly) and “a richly expressive display of stentorian brilliance” (The Wire Magazine).

Her work ranges from chamber music performance to solo experimental improvisation to individual and collaborative compositions that incorporate live electronics, theatre, and text. Host Seth Boustead talks with Rogers and features an array of her wonderful music.

Austin and Elori speak about Elori’s recently release Drifts and Surfaces. This sparks a lively conversation about signal processing, compositional process and the majestic and powerful force that is the Northern Shore of Minnesota.

Composer Ian Wilson's ten-movement piece Orpheus Down is inspired by the story of Orpheus’ journey to the Underworld to bring his lover Eurydice back from the dead.

The myth and its themes of deep and dark inspire fascinating music on a new release featuring bass clarinettist Gareth Davis and double-bassist Dario Calderone, for whom the piece was written.

February 2nd, 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s landmark novel Ulysses.

To celebrate the importance of this milestone, the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland (CMC) teamed up with the Centre Culturel Irlandais (CCI) to present an international celebration across Ireland and Europe from February to June 2022.

Seth Boustead talks to the CMC’s Linda O’Shea Farren from the CMC about this project and features music from the resulting concert and film series.

Classical:NEXT is the global networking and exchange hub dedicated exclusively to classical and art music, for all professionals – artists, managers, presenters, orchestras, labels, educators, press, media, publishers and more.

Seth Boustead traveled to Hannover to cover this extraordinary festival for Relevant Tones. Part 2 features music from the showcases, club nights and project pitches.

Classical:NEXT is the global networking and exchange hub dedicated exclusively to classical and art music, for all professionals – artists, managers, presenters, orchestras, labels, educators, press, media, publishers and more.

Back in person after two years, host Seth Boustead traveled to Hannover to cover this extraordinary festival for Relevant Tones.  Featured music by Flex Ensemble, Kai Schumacher arranging and playing Steve Reich, Asambura Ensemble and Ayana Witter Johnson.

We listen to a lot of music here at Relevant Tones.  Here are a few new pieces currently on the radar for Matt Dotson and Austin Williams. Featured music includes Land by CARM, String Quartet No. 1 by Sophi Jani, For Ennio and Arctic horizon by Wøunds and I Know I'll Never Know by Masaya Ozaki.

Annika Socolofsky is a composer and avant folk vocalist who explores corners and colors of the voice frequently deemed to be "untrained" and not "classical."  Described as “unbearably moving” (Gramophone) and “just the right balance between edgy precision and freewheeling exuberance” (The Guardian), her music erupts from the embodied power of the human voice and is communicated through mediums ranging from orchestral and operatic works to unaccompanied folk ballads and unapologetically joyous Dolly Parton covers.

MUSIC

Shy One, Sweet One
- Performed by Annika Socolofsky and Latitude Forty-Nine

I Tell You Me
- Performed by ~Nois and Annika Socolofsky

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: silience
- Performed by the Zöllner-Roche Duo

Turadh
- Performed by Parhelion Ensemble and Annika Socolofsky

Barry Paul Clark is an active composer, bassist and improvising musician and he’s a frequent collaborator with artists of all disciplines nationally and internationally.

Host Austin Williams talks with him and features tracks from Tontine Ensemble’s latest release Dogma Protocols.

MUSIC

Dogma Protocol - Regeneration

Dogma Protocol - Call Signal

Dogma Protocol - Analysis Paralysis

Dogma Protocol - Violence

Milwaukee Ballet collaboration - Affixed

Dogma Protocol - Splatter

Throughout the centuries composers have challenged performers to new heights of manual dexterity by writing études, pieces of music expressly designed to push the boundaries of what is technically possible.

Host Stephen Anthony Rawson features a selection of 21st century études. Yannis Kyriakides, Karaoke Etudes has a graphical score element. Check out the video here https://youtu.be/F0T6DVhyedw?t=992

Composers Kelly Sheehan and Chi Wang are finding great creativity in everyday technological objects like Wii remotes.  Host Austin Williams gives us a glimpse into this fascinating musical world.

D-Composed is a Chicago-based chamber music experience that honors Black creativity and culture through the music of Black composers. Since 2017, they have created intimate, out-of-the-box experiences that celebrate a mix of genres and sounds of Black music throughout history.  

Seth Boustead talks with founder and Executive Director Kori Coleman and violist and Artistic Director Yelley Taylor.

New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow’s widely acclaimed memoir is the source for this extremely moving story of his traumatic youth in Louisiana. 

Composer Terence Blanchard, one of the most influential figures in American jazz, teamed up with librettist Kasi Lemmons, director of such remarkable films as Harriet and Eve’s Bayou to create an opera adaptation of this remarkable story.

The result is an an opera that is timely, moving and powerful, revealing the Black experience in this country as few other operas have done and it's currently at the Lyric Opera in Chicago. 

Stephen Rawson talks with Blanchard and features excerpts from the opera, courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera. 

Composer/guitarist/rapper/Di.J./producer Gene Pritsker has written over 900 compositions, including chamber operas, orchestral and chamber works, electro-acoustic music and songs for hip-hop and rock ensembles.

He is the founder and leader of Sound Liberation; an eclectic hip hop-chamber-jazz-rock-etc and he is also the co-director of Composers Concordance, a new music presenting organization with a 30-year history of producing concerts in NYC.  

Gene talks with host Seth Boustead about his new album Gene and the Strings coming out August 2nd of this year.

Versatile saxophonist, composer and improviser Nick Zoulek specializes in an innovative technique that allows him to play multiple notes at the same time or use multiple techniques at the same time.

Fluent in a wide range of idioms, Zoulek creates highly charged, often beautifully kinetic music that hits hard.

Hosted by Austin Williams

Dal Niente's latest release on SIDEBAND RECORDS features works by three composers using elements of pop, musique concrète and film music transformed into a contemporary classical music idiom. 

Austin Williams talks with ensemble members Ben Melsky and Emma Hospelhorn about this remarkable recording.

She's the youngest person to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, she toured with Kanye, and the Met Museum's Limor Tomer called her the "future of music." Caroline Shaw is a wildly successful composer, performer and producer who has created an impressive body of distinctly eclectic work.  Matt Dosland talks with her about life, music, oranges and eggs. 

Sarah Cahill’s The Future is Female is a three volume series, which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These recordings feature more than 70 compositions by women around the globe and includes many première recordings.

Austin Williams chats with Sarah ahead of the release of this extraordinary three-volume album on March 4th.

We celebrate Twosday (2/22/22) with antiphonal pieces selected by host Austin Williams.

In 2015 we corresponded with several composers from Ukraine, at that time openly at war, about the challenges they faced. With Ukraine in the news again and the future again uncertain, we feature another small sample of the incredibly vibrant music being created by Ukranian composers today.  Music by Valentin Silvestrov, Bohdana Frolyak, Ludmila Yurina and Virko Baley. 

Eschewing the collection of traditional titles that describe single elements of her body of work, The Honourable Elizabeth A. Baker refers to herself as a “New Renaissance Artist” that embraces a constant stream of change and rebirth in practice, which expands into a variety of media, chiefly an exploration of how sonic and spatial worlds can be manipulated to personify a variety of philosophies and principles both tangible as well as intangible.

Austin Williams talks to her about her latest album Remain Calm. 

Award-winning composer Jimmy López Bellido has been performed by leading orchestras and his music has been heard in some of the world’s most prestigious venues.

His opera based on the bestselling novel “Bel Canto” was premiered by Chicago Lyric Opera to great acclaim and he served as the Houston Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence from 2017 until 2020.

Seth Boustead talks with him about his new album Aurora & Ad Astra featuring Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Leticia Moreno, and the Houston Symphony.

Angel Island – Oratorio for Voices and Strings by Huang Ruo is inspired by the poems carved into the walls at the detention center at Angel Island Immigration Station during the Chinese Exclusion Act years.

This new work, commissioned by the Del Sol Quartet, takes an unflinching look at discrimination and immigration issues in our nation, past and present.  Host Seth Boustead talks with Huang Ruo and founding violist of the Del Sol Quartet Charlton Lee.

Based on the rap song of the same title by Nas, Undying Love is a tragic love story set in 1960’s Queens, New York.

Stephen Anthony Rawson talks with composer/librettist Steve Wallace and Artistic Director of Hearing in Color LaRob K. Payton about this collaborative project. 

Saad Haddad is a composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and electroacoustic music who achieves a “remarkable fusion of idioms” (New York Times), most notably in his work exploring the disparate qualities inherent in Western art music and Middle Eastern musical tradition

His music delves into that relationship by transferring the performance techniques of traditional Arabic instruments to Western symphonic instruments, while extending their capabilities through the advancement of technology.

Host Lisa Dell talks with Haddad about his music and recent projects.

2021 is a wrap!  Matt, Austin, Seth and Stephen choose some of our favorite album releases of the year including music by Pamela Z, Danielle Eva Schwob, Third Coast Percussion, Sergio and Clarice Assad and more!

Composer Douglas J. Cuomo’s Seven Limbs, written for and featuring Nels Cline and the Aizuri Quartet on Sunnyside Records is a ritual in seven movements, based on the Seven Limbs – a fundamental Tibetan Buddhist practice of purification. 

Doug talks about the music and his collaborative experience with host Austin Williams.

Taped live as part of the third night of the 2021 Relevant Tones Festival, this is the album release party for Carla Kihlstedt and Rafael Oses' stunning collaborative project Necessary Monsters. 

Necessary Monsters is a collaboration between composer/musician Carla  Kihlstedt and poet Rafael Osés. It is a contemporary song cycle based on  Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings — a  collection of fantastical creatures culled from literary and  mythological traditions around the world.

Seth Boustead talks with Carla, Rafael and author Stephen Asma.

A cowboy from Texas, Martín Quiroga's music makes use of traditional compositional techniques and a unique harmonic language in order to honor the musical forms of the past while capturing the harmonic language of the present. 

Stephen Anthony Rawson talks with him about his music and the Space City New Music Festival which he directs. 

Hearing In Color is a Chicago-based organization dedicated to sharing music, stories, and composers, that have been historically excluded from musical spaces, with its community.  Stephen Anthony Rawson talks with Artistic Director LaRob K. Payton and composer Steve Wallace. 

Jonathan Hannau is a Chicago-based composer and pianist devoted to the  surreal, minimal, abstract, and colorful possibilities of music.  Austin Williams talks with him about his new album Pieces I Wrote on a Cold Winter Night. 

Hailed as the "future of chamber music," string quartet Brooklyn Rider is a powerful force for musical creativity. Matt Dosland talks with cellist Michael Nicolas about several recent projects.

Described by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a “rising star”, composer Elijah Daniel Smith is quickly establishing himself as one of today’s leading young composers. 

Longtime friend and fellow composer Austin Williams chats with him about a big new commission from the CSO and his approach to music-making. 

For the second night of the Relevant Tones Tenth Anniversary Festival we were honored to welcome architect Daniel Libeskind and Open House New York's Dorothy Dunn to the stage. 

We screened a special preview of several videos from Access Contemporary Music's upcoming Songs About Buildings and Moods video series exploring the intersection between music and architecture and had a fabulous discussion. 

The opening night of the Relevant Tones Tenth Anniversary Festival featured an exciting multi-media concert of music inspired by Rube Goldberg machines.

We were joined by Rube’s granddaughter Jennifer George who is also the director of the Rube Goldberg Institute, and an all-star roster of musicians for an unforgettable evening.

Composer, performer, producer Ben Lumsdaine does it all! Austin and Ben had a lovely chat about their album Murmurations Without End.

While Ben has a strong background in straight ahead jazz playing with some heavy hitters such as John Raymond and Dustin Laurenzi he has invited the cast to develop some compelling minimalistic works.

Austin and Ben end up talking shop for a bit about gear but ultimately it all comes back to the music. Watch out for whatever Ben touches, it's going to be gold!

Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces.

Annie  Gosfield, whom the BBC called "A one woman Hadron collider" lives in  New York City and works on the boundaries between notated and improvised  music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise.

Her music is often inspired by the inherent beauty of found sounds,  such as machines, destroyed pianos, warped 78 rpm records and jammed  radio signals.

Stephen Rawson talks with her about her life in music and features  excerpts of several key works including her opera War of the Worlds.

(photo by Paula Court)

In 1949 a 23-year old composer named Daphne Oram wrote a pioneering new work for two orchestras, live electronics and turntables that was subsequently lost for decades. 

Only vague references survived until composer and archivist James Bulley rediscovered the complete score in 2015. He enlisted composer and turntable artist Shiva Feshareki to help him realize the electronics using the technology that would have been available to Oram.

In 2018 the work was finally premiered at the BBC Proms. It was the first work of its kind and it is a masterpiece.

ACM's Thirsty Ears Festival is Chicago's only classical music street festival combining stellar performances with great craft beer from Empirical Brewing.

We did an intimate live broadcast the night before from the ACM School of Music featuring performances by Michael Hall, the Wurtz-Berger Duo and the Quijote Duo.

Composer inti figgis-vizueta writes "magically real musics through the lens of personal identities, braiding a childhood of overlapping immigrant communities and Black-founded Freedom schools—in Chocolate City (DC)—with direct Andean & Irish heritage and a deep connection to the land." 

Stephen Rawson talks with them about music, poetry, magical realism and more.

We feature three works that recast age-old myths from a woman's perspective. Milica Paranosic's Penelope and the Geese reimagines the Odyssey from Penelope's point of view.  We talk with her about the opera and feature three key scenes.

And Marisa Michelson's Naama's Ark tells the flood myth from the perspective of Noah's wife and Salvatore Sciarrino's La Nuova Euridice lets Orpheus' famous bride tells her own story.

Photo by charis isis

A palimpsest is a manuscript whose original text has been scraped or washed away and overwritten with a new one, often many times over.  The original text is still present but visible only in fragments.

This concept has inspired composers to overlay music in similar ways to fascinating effect. We feature a small sample of musical palimpsests. Music by Kevin Ernste, George Benjamin, Paul Novak and Gabriel Kahane.

Texu Kim writes music that's fun, often humorous yet sophisticated, detailed and connected to his South Korean heritage in fascinating ways.

He's also the only composer we know to offer "major-league cuteness” (Broadway World) while also demonstrating “surprising scope.” (San Diego Story)

Access Contemporary Music's Sonic Walkabout is a fun way to explore a neighborhood and see and hear it as never before.

ACM commissioned composers to write music inspired by historic and cultural sites in Chicago's Wicker Park and Lakeview neighborhoods and combined their musical creations with narrative storytelling. Music by Amy Wurtz, Amos Gillespie, Seth Boustead, Kyle Gregory Price, Trevor Patricia Watkin and Jonathan Hannau.

Trailblazing composer Louis Andriessen was one of the most influential composers of his generation.  Sadly, Andriessen passed away on July 1st of this year.  We talked to him in 2014 about his life in music and featured some of his best-known pieces.

Host Austin Gray Williams and Sarah Belle Reid dig into Sarah’s multidisciplinary practices of being a composer, improviser, educator, and active member of the modular synthesis community.

While discussing these topics Austin gains insight into what goes on for Sarah’s preparations on improvising a set. Her affinity for deep listening and how that sculpts her way through with improvising and composing.

Sarah is also deeply passionate about education and making electronic music as accessible possible for anyone who is interested. If you’re curious about Sarah and her works find her on BandCamp, here and her website https://www.sarahbellereid.com/ for more info!

They're on 60 Minutes, they're in the New York Times, they're the subject of an eagerly awaited report to Congress.  UFOs haven't been this hot since the '90's.  We feature music inspired by these celestial mysteries. Music by Michael Daugherty, Katherine Young and Philip Glass.

In honor of Children's Day in the US we feature music written for and by kids of all ages.  Concept and research by Stephen Anthony Rawson, hosted by Seth Boustead.  Music by Karen Tanaka, Meredith Monk, inti figgis-vizueta and Osvaldo Golijov. 

Laura Elise Schwendinger is a composer whose strongly personal style of music is filled with kinetic energy and slow-burning intensity.  Feature music includes High Wire Act, Chiaroscuro Azzurro, Waking Dream and Esprimere for Cello and Orchestra. 

Originally aired December 27, 2014. Produced by Jesse McQuarters