Michael Ned Holte is a writer, independent curator, and educator based in Los Angeles, as well as the Associate Dean for the School of Arts at CalArts.

He has held exhibitions at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, and the Hammer Museum, to name only a few. He has also written monographic essays on artists including Charles Gaines, Richard Hawkins, Alice Konitz, Shio Kusaka, Caitlin Lonegan, Roy McMakin, Steve Roden, Clarissa Tossin, and Shirley Tse.

On today’s episode, Stephen Anthony Rawson talks with Michael about his recent book, Good Listener: Meditations on Music and Pauline Oliveros. This book is a result of a year-long performance of Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Meditation XXI, which asks the question: “What constitutes your musical universe?”

Yuval Noah Harari’s breathtakingly expansive book Sapiens is a monumental achievement that comprehensively summarizes human history, behavior and thought from primordial times to today.

The book is also the inspiration for a 50-minute piano work by composer Sean Hickey recorded by pianist Vladimir Rumyantsev on Sono Luminus records and available on March 14, 2025.

Host Seth Boustead talks with Hickey about Harari's book and this fascinating new musical release.

Shara Nova is a composer, vocalist, and producer currently creating from Detroit, Michigan. Shara has released six albums under the monikerMy Brightest Diamond and has composed works for The Crossing, Conspirare, yMusic, Brooklyn Rider, Roomful of Teeth, Aarhus Symfoni, and American Composers Orchestra among many others.

In 2024 she starred in the Tony Award Winning musical “Illinoise” on Broadway, directed by Justin Peck, co-written by Jackie Sibblies Drury with music by Sufjan Stevens, witha live album released on Nonesuch Records.

Host Seth Boustead features a variety of pieces by composers who ask the performers to vocalize in some way while also playing their instrument.

Music by Frederick Rzewski, George Crumb, Daniel Bernard Roumain and Tom Johnson.

Access Contemporary Music has just released the second season of their PBS series Songs About Buildings and Moods in which they commission music inspired by historically and culturally relevant buildings and film a performance of the piece in the building that inspired it.

Host Seth Boustead features new pieces by Liza Sobel Crane, Ledah Finck, Michael Kropf, Amy Wurtz, Felipe Perez Santiago and Danielle Eva Schwob inspired by the Stony Island Arts Bank, Peabody Library, Fisher Building, the Wrigley Building, a former convent in Mexico City and the Brooklyn Tower.

We feature music from some of our favorite albums of 2024. Music selected by Austin Williams, Stephen Anthony Rawson, Neve Jahn and Matthew Dosland.

Wedge: Moments of growth and Decay. Join host Austin Williams as he discusses a variety of works that are heavily influenced by shape. Shape is a very simple concept in composition, but how far do composers take it?

We will take a deep dive into works that use it to influence motif and melodic lines, form, and overall structure of works. The power of taking a simple concept and expanding it to all musical facets can go a long way, let’s see how far it takes us!

Join host Austin Williams and we discuss how the concept of granulation finds its ay into many new and old(er) works of music. Granular activities are something we all experience on. Human level, the sums of man creating the whole.

This broad topic can be applied in very specific ways such as granular synthesis or the deconstruction of an idea that will lead to the parts being reassembled in a new scope.

It can also be applied to much broader topics such as counterpoint and other existing art and how that influences other creations.