Kurt Rohde traces his understanding of what a piece needs in order to exist: not a formal prompt, but a person, a story, an imagined life the music can grow out of. Writing Double Trouble for violist Ellen Ruth Rose was the first time all the linkages were in place — knowing the person, knowing what she'd done, knowing the piece was meant to be played by her — and the experience clarified something that had been forming for years. Rohde describes a pre-compositional process of extensive journaling, working through ideas that are mostly non-musical, then finding ways to bring them into sound. Design, for both Rohde and Tyler, becomes the operative word: not structuralism, but a practice that holds form, material, and time together — and gives the piece somewhere to go before a single note is written.
Listen to music/Maker with Tyler Kline wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com.
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micro/Maker is a production of Loose Leaf Transmissions: Made for All Ears.