Emerging composers explore unconventional sonic landscapes in a collaboration with the UW Modern Music Ensemble. With original compositions by Aidan Gold, Irene Putnam, Nicole Chang, and Sandesh Nagaraj.
Weary Days are My Hope (After Dowland's Flow My Tears) ..................................... Irene Putnam
Audrey Cullen, alto flute Caitlin Beare, clarinet; Emily Acri, violin Chris Young, cello; Mason Lynass, percussion; Tristan Greeno, piano
Gabriela Garza, conductor
Value of Object = ............................................................................................. Sandesh Nagaraj
Rachel Reyes, flute/straw; Caitlin Beare, clarinet/bamboo flute; Emily Acri, violin; Chris Young, cello; Ed Cunneen, percussion; Mason Lynass, percussion; Tristan Greeno, piano/dishrack
Gabriela Garza, conductor
Breathing in Void ...................................................................................................... Nikki Chang
Emily Acri, violin; Judith Kim, violin; Chris Young, cello; Alessandra Barrett, viola; Abby Blackwell, bass
In Memory of What Never Was .................................................................................... Aidan Gold
Eliza Rodrigues, flute; Jamie Sanidad, oboe; Caitlin Beare, clarinet; Emily Acri, violin; Alessandra Barrett, viola; Chris Young, cello; Ed Cunneen, percussion; Mason Lynass, percussion; Tristan Greeno, piano
Aidan Gold, conductor
Huck Hodge is professor and chair of the composition program in the school of music. A composer of “harmonically fresh work", "full of both sparkle and thunder” (New York Times), his music has been praised for its “immediate impact” (Chicago Tribune), its "clever, attractive, streamlined" qualities (NRC Handelsblad, Amsterdam), and its ability to "conjure up worlds of musical magic” with “power and charisma" (Gramophone Magazine, London). There is a dramatic interplay of color, light, and darkness in his music, which emerges from an uncanny blending of pure and dissonant harmonies, widely spaced orchestrations and vast, diffuse timbres.
Hodge is the recipient of many prestigious awards and distinctions. Among these is the Charles Ives Living, the largest music award conferred by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His other major awards include the Rome Prize (Luciano Berio Fellowship), the Gaudeamus Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the American Composers Forum (JFund), the Barlow Endowment, Music at the Anthology (MATA), the American Academy in Rome, Muziek Centrum Nederland, Musik der Jahrhunderte, and the National Theater and Concert Hall of Taiwan, in addition to multiple grants and awards from ASCAP, the Bogliasco Foundation, Copland House, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), MacDowell, New Music USA, the Siemens Musikstiftung, and Yaddo.
His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and at numerous major festivals — the New York Philharmonic Biennial, Berliner Festspiele, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Shanghai New Music Week (上海当代音乐周), ISCM World Music Days, and many others in over twenty countries on six continents. Other performances include those by members of the Berlin Philharmonic and Ensemble Modern, the ASKO / Schönberg Ensemble, the Seattle Symphony, and the Orchestra of the League of Composers. His chamber music has been premiered, performed and recorded by a long list of soloists and ensembles such as the Daedalus, JACK, Mivos, and Pacifica string quartets, the Adapter, Aleph, Argento, Dal Niente, Divertimento, Insomnio, SurPlus, and Talea ensembles, and his colleagues David Gordon, Donna Shin, Cristina Valdés, Cuong Vu, and Bonnie Whiting. His published music is distributed by Alexander Street Press (US) and Babel Scores (France). Recordings of his music appear on the New World and Albany record labels and have been featured in numerous national and international broadcasts.
Before joining the University of Washington, Hodge taught composition at Columbia University, where he earned his M.A. and D.M.A. studying with Fred Lerdahl, George Lewis, and Tristan Murail. Prior to this, he studied composition, theory, and new media at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany, with Marco Stroppa and Georg Wötzer as well as music, German literature and philosophy at the University of Oregon and the Universität Stuttgart. He has been a visiting professor/invited lecturer on music and aesthetics at a variety of institutions including the University of Chicago, CNMAT/UC Berkeley, UCSD, Columbia University, Eastman School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, NYU, and the Universität der Künste in Berlin, and he served for three years as the director of the Merriman Family Young Composers Workshop at the Seattle Symphony.
Yiğit Kolat’s music explores the liminal frontiers of musical activity and potentialities in processing extra-musical data as musical information. The complicated political and social environment of his native Turkey is a recurring theme in his diverse output, which includes acoustic, electro-acoustic, and electronic works written for orchestra, chamber ensembles, voice, and solo instruments.
His works, described as “touching and convincing...a multi-sensory universe,” (K. Saariaho) have been recognized by a prestigious array of international organizations, including the Bogliasco Foundation (2016 Edward T. Cone Bogliasco Fellow in Music), the Tōru Takemitsu Composition Award (1st Prize, 2015), the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium (Finalist, 2013), and the Concours International de Composition Henri Dutilleux (2nd Prize, 2012).
His music has been featured throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia by leading ensembles and soloists, among them the Tokyo Philharmonic and Ryoko Aoki (Japan); Solistes de L’Orchestre de Tours, Donatienne Michel-Dansac, and Pascal Gallois (France); The Nieuw Ensemble, The Black Pencil Ensemble, and the Duo Mares (The Netherlands); Eric Wubbels, Jonathan Shames, the Talea Ensemble, and the Argento New Music Project (USA); the Presidential Symphony Orchestra of Turkey; Peter Sheppard-Skaerved and Aaron Shorr (Great Britain). His music has been broadcast by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) and Turkish Radio Television (TRT).
Kolat earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Washington, studying with Joël-François Durand.
Recently hailed by Fanfare Magazine as “excellent” and “clearly sensitive,” Cuban-American pianist Cristina Valdés is known for presenting innovative concerts with repertoire spanning over 300 years. A fierce advocate for new music, she has premiered countless works, including many written for her. She has performed across four continents and in venues such as Lincoln Center, Benaroya Hall, Carnegie Recital Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, Miller Theatre, Jordan Hall, and the Kennedy Center. Ms. Valdés has appeared both as a soloist and chamber musician at festivals worldwide including New Music in Miami, the Foro Internacional de Música Nueva in Mexico City, Brisbane Arts Festival, the Festival of Contemporary Music in El Salvador, Havana Contemporary Music Festival, and the Singapore Arts Festival.
An avid chamber musician and collaborator, Ms. Valdés has toured extensively with the Bang On a Can “All Stars”, and has performed with the Seattle Chamber Players, the Mabou Mines Theater Company, the Parsons Dance Company, and Antares. Her performances on both the Seattle Symphony’s Chamber Series and [UNTITLED] concerts have garnered critical acclaim, including her “knockout” (Seattle Times) performance of Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, and her “arrestingly eloquent performance” of Dutilleux’s Trois Preludes (Bernard Jacobson/MusicWeb International).
Ms. Valdés has appeared as concerto soloist with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Philharmonic, the Lake Union Civic Orchestra, Johns Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, the Binghamton Philharmonic, NOCCO, Philharmonia Northwest, the Eastman BroadBand, and the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, amongst others. In 2015 she performed the piano solo part of the Ives 4th Symphony with the Seattle Symphony under the direction of Ludovic Morlot, which was later released on CD to critical acclaim and made Gramophone’s list of Top 10 Ives Recordings. Other recent recordings include Orlando Garcia’s From Darkness to Luminosity with the Málaga Philharmonic on the Toccata Classics label, and the world premiere recording of Kotoka Suzuki’s Shimmer, Tree | In Memoriam Jonathan Harvey. She can also be heard on the Albany, Newport Classics, Urtext, and Ideologic Organ labels.
In recent seasons she gave performances of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 3, the world-premiere performance of Carlos Sanchez-Guttierez’s Short Stories for piano and string orchestra with the Orquesta de Cámara de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and the US Premiere of Under Construction for solo piano and tape playback by Heiner Goebbels at Benaroya Hall. Last season included a wide variety of performances including Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the premiere of her own composition Sketches of an Anniversary Prelude for trumpet and piano, and the premiere of composer Jeremy Jolley’s (contro-)clessidra IV for piano and electronics written especially for her.
Since 2006 she has made her home in Seattle where she has been an integral part of the new music scene. Ms. Valdés founded the SLAM Festival, a new music festival dedicated to the music of Latin-American composers, and is a core member of the Seattle Modern Orchestra - the only large chamber orchestra in the Pacific Northwest solely dedicated to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. With the Seattle Modern Orchestra, she has premiered works by Anahita Abbasi, Darius Jones, Wang Lu, Kaley Eaton, Jeremy Jolley, and Yigit Kolat, amongst others.
Ms. Valdés received a Bachelor of Music from the New England Conservatory of Music, and a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts from SUNY Stony Brook. While at Stony Brook, she was a recipient of the Thayer Minority Fellowship, a member of the Stony Brook Graduate Piano Trio, and a winner of the Concerto Competition. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the University of Washington, where she teaches piano and is the director of the UW Modern Music Ensemble.