New Kids on the Radio Block

Getting to know the Gen Z classical music hosts of IPR

Grande, Rodrigo, and… Tchaikovsky?! That’s who kids these days are listening to, with the under-35 crowd adding classical composers to their playlists at a rate that outpaces their synth-pop loving parents. For younger millennials and Gen Z, the growing appreciation for sonatas and symphonies comes, in part, as a response to social media fatigue and influencer culture burnout, with these listeners finding comfort in the nostalgia of off-screen, analog eras they weren’t around for.

So it’s no surprise that in its 63rd year on the air, IPR’s not only working to reach the demographic with in-person music events like this summer’s weekly Happy Hour series at downtown TC’s Little Fleet, but also ushering in a wave of young hosts like Tyler Castellanos, Isabel Li, and Emma Stadelmann, who are eager to carry the classical music torch.

“What excites me about this new generation of hosts is they seem to want to make music communal again, not just something people experience alone through their ear buds,” says IPR executive director Peter Payette. “I think that’s the direction public radio needs to go, humans listening together…”

TYLER CASTELLANOS – 29

Ringing in 2026, Tyler Castellanos had no plans to hit the airwaves. “I can’t say my path to being a radio host was very conventional,” or even “something I ever really saw myself doing,” says the Zillennial (that is, born in that gray area between Tamagotchi fever and Y2K panic).

Instead, Castellanos’ trajectory was aimed at music education. With a Doctorate of Musical Arts in trumpet, he moved to northern Michigan from his home state of Georgia in 2024 to be Interlochen’s Academy band and orchestra manager before seeing a posting for the radio host role over this past spring break.

“And I told my wife, ‘hey, I’m going to apply for this thing. It’s a shot in the dark, but I think it would be cool to do.’”

After an April interview blitz, he landed the spot. But getting behind the mic didn’t temper his academic inclinations. “Finding ways to make the 50-second talk breaks interesting and educational between pieces is what is fun about it for me.”

The classical composer he’d most want to grab dinner with: Richard Wagner, so he can ask why the Bridal Chorus and Ride of the Valkyries composer wrote the trumpet sections to constantly switch keys. “Which back then meant the trumpeters had to physically change their instruments, and in modern day has led to us learning how to transpose to all different keys,” explains Castellanos, noting transposition is now standard for trumpet pedagogy and playing. “And it mostly stems back to Wagner and his chaotic orchestrations.”

On his early intro to classical instruments: “In 5th grade, the middle school jazz band came to my school and played a concert for us and did a sort of instrument showoff to us that really got my brain going.”

Favorite pieces to play for listeners: “I’ve been playing a lot of movie and video game music on the air since I’ve been here,” says Castellanos, with themes from Interstellar, Star Wars, The Legend of Zelda, and Halo making it into his lineup.

When to catch him: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 12-3pm for Music at Midday, then again for Music by Request on Saturdays from 9am–12pm (with a Sunday reprise of that show from 12-3pm).

ISABEL LI – 23

Hailing from Los Angeles, where winter highs hover around 70, IPR fellow Isabel Li was just a little taken aback by her “first true winter,” which featured NoMi’s 2025/2026 record-breaking snowfall.

“I’ll never forget opening my door and seeing three feet of unplowed snow blocking my way,” she says.

But with only the summer left before her fellowship wraps up and plans to return to California to pursue her PhD in Musicology (that means she’ll be digging into the anthropology, history, and science of music), Li’s eating up her time Up North, where she says locals are some of the “sweetest people ever” and where random run-ins with listeners—like the one who recently recognized her by voice at Cherry Republic—will have her missing the area next year. “I’m just overwhelmed by the amount of support I receive.”

On how long she’s been into classical music: “There’s a video of me as a three-year-old dancing to Mozart that my mom would play on the CD player,” says Li. A year later, she started playing violin and hasn’t put it down since. By high school, she was looping Dvořák and Mendelssohn’s quartets “for hours and hours on end,” and when the pandemic hit during her junior year, she’d end each of her long days tuning into LA’s classical station, KUSC. “I've always had this innate affinity for classical music.”

She’s even written and directed a short film about a 17 year-old Chinese-American cellist (2024’s Play, Then) which explores classical music through the perspective of a Gen Z protagonist while featuring a demographic of underrepresented musicians. “Whenever I watch films about classical music, they almost never feature Asian classical musicians, even though there’s a huge proportion of AAPI artists in this genre,” Li notes.

Why you won’t find her turning up the classical tunes with friends: “...I understand that not everyone wants to listen to a 40-minute Brahms symphony,” says Li. “Which makes my interactions with classical music even more special, and in a way, spiritual, because it’s so individual.”

Her favorite non-classical music: Film and television scores from titles including Cinema Paradiso, House of Hummingbird, and Past Lives.

When to catch her: Friday afternoons from 12–3pm for Music at Midday, plus some impromptu on-air moments.

EMMA STADELMANN – 24

IPR’s newest host Emma Stadelmann is in the full swing of things after starting with the station in June. But it’s not her first stint in broadcast. She spent the summer of 2024 hosting for Jazz 88.3 KCCK FM back in her home state of Iowa, but with a yearning to switch over to public radio, and having heard great things about Interlochen from friends who’d attended the Academy and camps, Stadelmann headed Up North.

Though she lists jazz as one of her favorite musical genres, the University of Notre Dame graduate spent her college days pulling all-nighters against the background sounds of late 19th century composer and pianist Alexander Scribian (“especially his Symphony No. 1 in E Major and Piano Concerto in F-Sharp Minor”).

“Honestly, I had a lot of friends in college who loved classical music just as much as I did or even more,” she says, adding that classical music is far from passe for her generation. “In fact, I think Gen Z is very open to it.” 

Her favorite thing about her IPR community so far: “Everyone loves music,” says Stadelmann, who grew up playing the trumpet and French Horn while frequenting classical concerts. “But also books, movies, games, podcasts, anything, really. They care deeply about the media they consume.”

On radio as the anecdote to algorithms: “Listening to radio is a serendipitous activity,” she says. “You, as a listener, are surprised and guided by someone else who thoughtfully chooses music and programming.” That makes the curation of radio fundamentally human. “A real person picks out everything you hear and chats with listeners because they truly care about providing a good experience,” but an algorithm, not so much.

Why algorithms and social media won’t be taking classical music down: “Short form content… can be creative and beautiful in its own way,” notes Stadelmann, who sees musicians trimming their pieces to their most climactic, viral moments for TikTok and Instagram as a way of making the genre more accessible to audiences by finding them where they’re at. “It keeps those melodies and sounds alive.”

Still, she hopes those whose attention span has waned over years of Reels and Shorts consumption can strike a balance in time, especially because “listening to a whole classical piece all the way through does feel almost meditative in comparison, and fulfilling in a different way.”

When to catch her: Weekdays from 3-6pm.

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