On today's episode of music/Maker with Tyler Kline, Tyler is joined by composer, performer, installation artist, and educator Rob Funkhouser.

Based in Indianapolis, Rob Funkhouser builds instruments out of metal mixing bowls, copper pipe, plywood, glass rods, and whatever else is at hand — and then writes music for them. His work engages ideas of place, memory, and pattern, and interrogates assumptions embedded in both art music performance and music education. He is composer in residence and artistic director for Sound Ecologies, a resident artist with Big Car Collaborative, and teaches music technology at the Herron School of Art. His installation work has reached thousands of people through exhibitions at the Guichelaar Gallery, at Spark Monument Circle, and at Burning Man. Recent premieres span solo piano to symphony orchestra.

In this conversation, Rob and Tyler trace a path that begins with singing along to a vacuum cleaner, moves through a failed timpani audition at Indiana University, a philosophy detour, a depression, a chance encounter at a Starbucks in Richmond, Indiana, and six years running a percussion museum in the basement of a mall — and arrives at a practice where composing, building, performing, and community-making are all expressions of the same restless curiosity. They talk about what draws a composer to build instruments rather than synthesize sounds, how translation between formats and formats unlocks new musical ideas, why the blank page is the enemy and a music box is the cure, and what it means to make music that surprises people with simple things.

Listen to Rob’s music on his website, https://www.robfunkhouser.com/, and view his built instruments at https://www.robfunkhouser.com/builds/

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music/Maker episodes release every other Thursday! Listen and subscribe wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com

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music/Maker is a production of Loose Leaf Transmissions: Made for All Ears.

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On today's episode of music/Maker with Tyler Kline, Tyler is joined by composer, performer, and educator Brittany J. Green.

Brittany's music works to create intimate, collaborative musical spaces at the intersection of sound, video, movement, and text — described by the Washington Post as "a creative force of attention-seizing versatility" and by the Chicago Classical Review as "cinematic in the best sense." Her recent work engages sonification and Black feminist theory as tools for sonic world-building, exploring the construction, displacement, and rupture of systems. Her music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, the Chicago Symphony's MusicNOW series, and Miller Theater, with collaborators including Alarm Will Sound, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and JACK Quartet. She holds a Ph.D from Duke University and teaches composition and music theory at East Carolina University.

In this conversation, Brittany traces a path from a family friend's piano to a clarinet piece about the rock cycle written in sixth grade, through a music education degree, a master's at East Carolina where she fell into the deep end of composition for the first time, and a doctorate at Duke — arriving at a practice where composing, theorizing, teaching, and advocacy are all expressions of the same central question: what can music actually do? They talk about Black feminist theory not as a theme but as a structural methodology — a way of embedding the politics into the formal behavior of the music itself, down to every fiber. They discuss whether a piece of music can be a form of political action rather than just representing one, the DIY music scenes of Durham and Louisville as radical experimental spaces hiding in plain sight, silence as an active compositional element rather than an absence, narration as a rhythmic voice within the ensemble, and the experience of developing a compositional voice — and then trying to get lost again.

Learn more about Brittany and her music on her website: https://www.brittanyjgreen.com/

music/Maker episodes release every other Thursday. Listen and subscribe wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com

Subscribe to the Loose Leaf Transmissions newsletter for new episodes, behind-the-scenes updates, and ways to support the work: looseleaftransmissions.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Support us on Patreon at patreon.com/LooseLeafTransmissions

Follow along on Instagram @loose.leaf.transmissions

music/Maker is a production of Loose Leaf Transmissions: Made for All Ears.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today's episode of music/Maker with Tyler Kline, Tyler is joined by composer Mendel Lee.

New Orleans-based composer, artistic entrepreneur, VCCA Fellow, and NPN Take Notice Fund grantee, Mendel Lee has built a creative practice that moves fluidly between writing music and building the infrastructure to support it. Since leaving his long tenure as Assistant Director of Tulane Bands in 2022, he has served as Executive Director of Versipel New Music – the organization born from a merger with his founding concert series nienteForte —–and as Board Vice President of Rhythm X.

Under his leadership, Versipel has become a defining force for new music in Louisiana, including launching Batture Contemporary, a Louisiana-focused new music festival. His music, praised for "finding the right balance between minimalist static space and forward motion and trajectory," draws on minimalist principles, groove-based rhythmic thinking, and a deep percussive background rooted in drum corps and the marching arts.

In this conversation, Mendel and Tyler trace a journey that is anything but linear: from new age piano pieces at high school talent shows, to drum corps, to a composition degree, to three years in corporate IT, to over a decade directing the Tulane marching band, to a leap of faith into full-time composing. They talk about the panic-written piece that finally made Mendel believe in his own musical instincts, the moment he stopped keeping his marching band identity separate from his concert work, what it really means to go from saying "I have a composition degree" to "I am a composer," and why his goal has never actually been for people to like his music.

Mendel and his music can be found online at https://mendellee.com/.

music/Maker episodes release every other Thursday! Listen and subscribe wherever you get podcasts, or at musicmakerpodcast.com

Subscribe to the Loose Leaf Transmissions newsletter for new episodes, behind-the-scenes updates, and ways to support the work: looseleaftransmissions.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Support us on Patreon at patreon.com/LooseLeafTransmissions

Follow along on Instagram @loose.leaf.transmissions

music/Maker is a production of Loose Leaf Transmissions: Made for All Ears.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.