Composer's Studio Composer's Studio

Composer, flutist, choreographer, sound artist, and radio broadcaster Annie Nikunen's music is an embodiment of her humanity. Join Tarik and Anna for an exploration of the physicality of sound with this lovely, creative spirit. 

From the kind-natured city of Buffalo, NY to the vibrant energy of Long Island; from being the Head Chorister in the Choir of Men and Boys at St. Pauls Cathedral to being the 2004 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, Music has always been at the heart of who Paul Moravec is.

In this episode of the Composer's Studio, Moravec speaks so eloquently about the personal intention of his music, its lyricism and the connection he feels to some of his most important pieces. 

With a fascination with language and mythos, Douglas Boyce composes music that draws on Medieval and Renaissance traditions but sits firmly within a modernist aesthetic. Building rich rhythmic structures that shift between order, fragmentation, elegance, and ferocity, many of his works have a direct historical touchstone. Other works draw on sources from antiquity,   literature, and philosophy. Join Tarik and Anna for a deep dive into a fascinating, modernist mind. 

Award winning Composer Christopher Dietz is a stargazer, his compositions moving through the darkness of spacetime in whirling constellations of sound. With instruments standing in for celestial bodies, Dietz engages in a philosophical contemplation of dualities and opposition, changing seasons, beginnings and endings. The individual, in relief against the unfathomable mass  of the Universe, turns from the broader view to the comforting safety of self-made limitations. Dietz’ reworking of The Rifleman’s Creed is a sympathetic, yet unflinching examination of humanity’s rigid, defensive attachment to its personal manifestos, though they lead us astray or into unwinnable conflicts. Join Tarik and Anna for a conversation that takes us from the deepest depths of the Universe to the mysteries of the human soul. 

It's very mysterious how it works, this pre-verbal language that we all recognize and comprehend. It's not simplistic or concrete yet somehow it channels and resonates its way through our minds and into our souls. It is with this vision and deep understanding that Worthington composes.  Often, she may not even know the meaning behind a composition until she has finished writing it.

Rain is a self-taught composer.  Magical Realism, Reflection and Musical Angels are some of the beautiful manifestations of  her music. Impulses for new pieces have ranged from the small bits of rain cascading off of windows to the two-note expression of a sigh as well as the tragedy and heartache felt so deeply and by so many after 911.

Shanan Estreicher is a man of many accomplishments, and he has done so, not for himself but for others.  There is a Hebrew phrase "Torah Lishmah." Loosely translated, it means - a raging thirst for knowledge.  But, in Shanan's case the gift he offers is not about the knowledge he's learned but rather the knowledge he shares. With a heart of a teacher, Shanan expresses his musical voice in a passionate and honest way: an uninterrupted communication of musical language that speaks through him so deeply, encouraging every voice around him to rise up and sing.