Where Yukoner Daniel Janke gets his inspiration

This story is a part of a web series called Music that Matters with CBC Yukon's Airplay host Dave White. Dave sits down with Yukoners to talk about five pieces of music that inspire them.

Daniel Janke is an accomplished composer and musician, and music has always been a big part of his life.

He's picked up inspiration and new ideas from all kinds of unique sources, and agreed to share some of them in this edition of Music That Matters.

"The first piece is an excerpt from Luciano Berio's Folk Songs," he said. "It's a series of folk songs from around the world ... this is really a piece that stuck with me."

Janke said he was inspired by Berio's music when he first heard it, and he still is.

"You learn things by discovering possibilities," he said. "And also just giving the singer more latitude and more responsibility and just not spelling everything out for the singer. I think those are the ways it influenced me."

"My second pick is something I just came across, it's new but it's just beautiful, I had to share it," said Janke.

It's another excerpt, this time some work from composer Claude Debussy as sung by Aphrodite Patoulidou.

"It's a beautiful piece of music, but what Aphrodite does with it is she improvises on the main theme with herself, there are four or five voices that just she records over, and she improvises in her native Macedonian style."

Janke's third selection is a piece of family history. It's his mother, Betty, singing in her home in 1954.

She was an accomplished singer who routinely performed with big bands that came through their small town in eastern Ontario. One day the family rented a direct-to-disc machine and recorded several songs, a remarkable archive the family continues to enjoy.

"When I was really young I played organ in the church," said Janke. "A couple of times when I didn't the hymn my Mom would call out the changes from the front row of the choir with her fingers ... she was that musical."

Janke said he has always been influenced by world music, and chose a track from Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté.

Janke met Diabaté years ago in Toronto.

"He actually sat down and showed me some tricks on this tune, but of course I still can't do it."

German composer Alfred Schnittke spent most of his career in the Soviet Union creating music for Russian movies, particularly so-called "red westerns," or Soviet versions of spaghetti westerns.

"You look at this films and they have cowboys and horses and trains and hold-ups, the only difference is it's all in Russian," said Janke. "But his music has always been a revelation of possibilities for me."