Tyler Kline

Tyler Kline (b. 1991; he/him/his) is a composer, audio engineer, and radio broadcaster whose work is deeply influenced by the ideals of Wabi-Sabi, a Japanese aesthetic and worldview that values transience, imperfection, and impermanence. This manifests in Tyler’s music in a variety of ways: the use of extended sounds/techniques in order to obscure musical textures; rhythmic dissonance that disconnects melodic and harmonic lines from the overall pulse; and fleeting gestures that evoke the natural world.

Recent compositions have included Orchard (2018), a collection of 50 short solo piano
character studies based on various botanical fruit; West of the Sun (2019), an orchestra work inspired by the writing of Haruki Murakami; various chamber works for solo clarinet (liveoak, 2020), violin and piano (Eight Aspects, 2020), melodica and piano (basil eyes, 2020), and toy piano (Sycamore, 2020); and a string quartet composed for Tokyo-based musicGROVE (2021).

Recognized by ASCAP, Hillsborough Arts Council (Tampa, FL), and Creative Loafing (Tampa, FL) for his work, Tyler’s music has been performed throughout the United States, and internationally in Europe, Asia, and Brazil. His compositions have been presented at a variety of venues, festivals, and conferences, including World Piano Conference (Novi Sad, Serbia), Dot the Line New Music Festival (South Korea), London International Piano Symposium (London, England), San Francisco Piano Festival (San Francisco, CA), Southeastern Regional Tuba/Euphonium Conference (Tallahassee, FL), Lucca International Festival (Lucca, Italy), Atlantic Music Festival (Waterville, ME), Maryland Wind Festival, NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, International Computer Music Conference, National Association of Composers/USA National Conference, and the Penn State University New-Music Festival and Symposium (State College, PA).

Tyler is co-artistic director of Terroir New Music, an event series that combines the music of living composers with the work of local chefs and brewers. In addition to his work in composition, he is a classical music radio announcer at WSMR (Tampa, FL), where he also produces and hosts a weekly contemporary-music program called Modern Notebook.

A native of Kentucky, Tyler holds a Bachelor of Arts from Morehead State University where he studied euphonium with Dr. Stacy Baker and held a multi-year undergraduate research fellowship mentored by Dr. Deborah Eastwood. He received a Masters of Music from the University of South Florida, where his primary composition teachers were Dr. Baljinder Sekhon and Paul Reller. He currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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