Writing & Composition

Composer and performer Meredith Monk tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about her approaches to writing music, singing and live performance.

Minimalist composer Steve Reich explains his approach to writing music.

Jack Eric Williams played one of the villains in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, and found success during a run of Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. He has written a musical of his own called Mrs. Farmer's Daughter, about the life of actress Frances Farmer, which is now in production in Philadelphia.

The musician started his career as a pianist, later focusing on vocals at the age of 27. He has developed an unusual technique and impressive three-and-a-half octave range.

The musician moved from Philadelphia moved to New York to broaden her career opportunities. She considers how gender and her biracial background have affected her standing in the jazz scene.

The musician started his career as a pianist, later focusing on vocals at the age of 27. He has developed an unusual technique and impressive three-and-a-half octave range.

Accordionist William Schimmel explains how his instrument lends itself to stylistic mash-ups and improvisatory approaches to composition.

Composer John Morris is film director Mel Brooks' longtime collaborator. In addition to writing the music for comedies, Morris also scored David Lynch's The Elephant Man.

Adams is often associated with other minimalist composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich. His new album, The Chairman Dances, features parts of his new opera-in-progress called Nixon in China.

New music composer John Harbison was drawn to classical music because the genre leant itself to longer pieces and a deeper exploration of musical ideas. He often writes for his wife, the violinist Rosemary Harbison.

Avant-garde composer and saxophonist John Zorn's most recent album reinterprets the music of film composer Ennio Morricone. His forthcoming recording pays homage to detective novelist Mickey Spillane.

Coleman was a child piano prodigy who has written for Broadway, television and pop artists. Despite his popular success, he says that, in order to keep working, he still has to audition for directors and producers.

New Fresh Air performer-in-residence Dick Hyman plays some of the music of Jelly Roll Morton. Hyman says the pianist and composer bridged the gap between ragtime and jazz, incorporating the phrasing and style of wind and reed players.

Rather than features songs from the 1970s in the recent Patty Hearst biopic, the filmmakers recruited composer Scott Johnson to write the soundtrack. His dense score combines synthesizers with heavy percussion, but retains the accessibility of pop music.

Sondheim briefly wrote for the television show Topper before becoming the lyricist for the Broadway hits West Side Story and Gypsy. A trained composer, he later began writing his own musicals which, Sondheim says, continued in the Rogers and Hammerstein tradition. They include Sweeney Todd, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Into the Woods.

Zappa's avant-garde band, the Mothers of Invention, failed to get much airplay, in part because of their explicit lyrics. Zappa now divides his time between studio composition and live performance. He is politically active, and has fought against censorship and encouraged his fans to register to vote.

Rhys Chatham is a classically-trained, minimalist composer who incorporates rock influences into his music. He joins Fresh Air to talk about his choice of instrumentation, and the evolution of his work over the years.

Composer and keyboardist Wayne Horvitz was associated with the Manhattan downtown scene of experimental composers and improvisers. Now a resident of Seattle, he fuses his diverse musical influences in a new album called The President.

The minimalist composer's new piece, Different Trains, contrasts Reich's childhood experiences crossing the country by rail to visit his divorced parents with the memories of Holocaust survivors' journey to concentration camps. The music incorporates recordings of several interviews into the orchestration.

Band leader and composer Mercer Ellington is the son of Duke Ellington, and leads the Duke Ellington Band. As a young man, Mercer Ellington played trombone, French horn and trumpet in his father's ensemble. Two recent Mercer Ellington albums have won wide acclaim: "Digital Duke" and "For Ellington," performed by the Modern Jazz Quartet.