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 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.