Emerging and established composers explore unconventional sonic landscapes in this concert of music by students, faculty, alumni, and guests of the UW Composition program.
PROGRAM
Hand Soap in Flux: Savannah Johnston
Savannah Johnston, voice
Flashback: Lu Yin
Tristan Greeno, Lu Yin; piano
Structured Improv Session
Jay Rauch, bassoon; Ryan Carraher, electric guitar; Sandesh Nagaraj, electric bass; Tristan Greeno, piano
PROGRAM NOTES
Hand Soap in Flux — Savannah Johnston
Change is unavoidable. It can feel harsh but also gives you a sense of cleaning up a chapter to work on a new one. This cleansing nature is where I derive my title for this piece. On the day I began to write for this project I also accidentally gave myself slight bleach poisoning while deep cleaning my home. It was painful, abrasive, and embarrassing but at the end of the day I learned lessons and also my house was incredibly clean. While on a walk trying to get normal air back into my lungs I had a chance to really think about the nature of change and what it meant to me at this point in my life. It was an infuence while creating this piece and wanted to relate it directly in the title — Hand Soap in Flux. Hand soap suds, bubbles, and cleans but it’s not as wildly abrasive as Clorox which relates to the intensity of thought I found more fitting.
—S. Johnston
DIRECTOR BIOS
Yiğit Kolat’s music draws inspirations and expressions from a wide array of topics ranging from bytebeats to the application and ethics of artificial intelligence in music. The complicated political and social landscapes of his native Turkey and adopted United States often inform his diverse output. 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 Tōru Takemitsu Composition Award, the Queen Elisabeth Competition, Bogliasco Foundation, and the Concours International de Composition Henri Dutilleux. His music has been featured throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia by leading ensembles and soloists, among them the Tokyo Philharmonic, Solistes de L’Orchestre de Tours, The Nieuw Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Argento New Music Project, Seattle Modern Orchestra, Ryoko Aoki, Donatienne Michel-Dansac, Bonnie Whiting, and Peter Sheppard-Skaerved. His music has been broadcast by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) and Turkish Radio Television (TRT).
He has presented his research at conferences such as Conference on AI Music Creativity (University of Oxford, Vrije Universiteit Brussels), Spectralisms International Conference (IRCAM), and Reëmbodied Sound Symposium (Columbia University). Kolat earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Washington, studying with Joël-François Durand.