Part of a generation of composers that find equal influence in pop and classical music, Mikel Rouse is a master at commingling the two. “I figure my small contribution has been to take the structure of classical music and put it into a more rock and popular music style of writing and production,” he says. In his landmark pieces including the opera Dennis Cleveland, which takes the shape of a Jerry Springer-style talk show, or the intertwined voices of the more intimate Music for Minorities—written during a residency at Louisiana Tech in Ruston —Rouse finds a way to mitigate the complexity of everyday life through the organizational framework of music, engaging in what he refers to as “Romantic channel surfing”

In his latest project, Gravity Radio, Rouse intersperses a brace of acoustic ballads (dressed up with tasteful orchestral counterpoint) with a series of mock news reports that themselves are built from poetic commentary and journalistic detachment. “We update the stories every day for each show from the AP news wire. They are all real stories.” The dense string quartet arrangements behind these broadcasts are then reflected in the melodies of the songs, causing a collapse of the formal and the experimental. One of those songs, “The Gravity of New Orleans” deals with a collapse with which many of us can relate. “I’ve had a love affair with New Orleans for more than 25 years. I wrote most of Failing Kansas, my first opera, in New Orleans. I was devastated like everyone was, about Katrina and the government response, and so in a very big way, Gravity Radio is for New Orleans.”

Gravity Radio makes its world premiere at the Contemporary Arts Center, January 23 at 8 p.m.