Modern Notebook for August 18

Modern Notebook for August 18 - 24, 2024

Photo: Composer Jenn Jolley (photo credit: Liz Glenn).

On this week’s Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: The writing of Emily Dickinson has long inspired composers to set her words to music, and we’ll hear a work by Jennifer Jolley that features three poems by Dickinson. It’s music for soprano, flute, and guitar that weaves in and out of moods, somber, to bright, to free.

Then: it’s solo violin music by Scott Wollschleger titled Secret Machine No. 7. It’s music that draws on the composer’s typical glitchy soundworlds, but notably, asks the violin to detune one string and use a metal mute to produce delicate, yet clear, noises.

Hear that, and pieces by inti figgis-vizueta, David Sanford, Viet Cuong, Andrea Mazzariello, Shruthi Rajasekar, Yu-Hui Cheng, Akenya Seymour, and others; and performances by flutist Jennifer Grim with pianist Michael Sheppard, soprano Fotina Naumenko with flutist Julietta Currenton and guitarist Colin Davin, PRISM Quartet, pianist Michael Mizrahi, Maithree Ensemble, violinist Miranda Cuckson, and more.

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Modern Notebook for November 30 - December 6, 2025

By Tyler Kline • November 27, 2025

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