The Modern Music Ensemble (Cristina Valdés, director) premieres four new works composed for the ensemble by University of Washington composition students, in addition to Morton Feldman's sublime Viola in My Life, and Alvin Lucier's evocative Memory Spaces.
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PROGRAM
This Is Fine (2021)....................................................Joe Krycia
for mixed live/digital sextet
Bridget Long, oboe
Constance Aguocha, violin
Mia HyeYeon Kim, piano and digital keyboard
Ryan Carraher, electric guitar
Aaron Michael Butler, double vibraphone
chicken head (2021).......................................................Maxwell Williams
for solo flute and fixed media
Megan Hutchison, flute
flesh claws tripping over feather-drunk Thing (2021)....................Jay Rauch
Constance Aguocha, violin
Christine Chu, violin
Madeline Warner, viola
Kevin Leiferman, cello
the viola in my life (1) (1970).........................................Morton Feldman
Megan Hutchison, flute
Constance Aguocha, violin
Madeline Warner, viola
Kevin Leiferman, cello
Mia HyeYeon Kim, piano
Aaron Michael Butler, percussion
c a s c a d e s (2021)......................................................Darcy Copeland
Constance Aguocha, violin
Christine Chu, violin
Madeline Warner, viola
Kevin Leiferman, cello
Darcy Copeland, live electronics and video
(Seattle) Memory Space (1970).....................................................Alvin Lucier
Megan Hutchison, flute
Bridget Long, oboe
Constance Aguocha, violin
Madeline Warner, viola
Kevin Leiferman, cello
Mia HyeYeon Kim, piano
Aaron Michael Butler, percussion
Jonathan Rodriguez, percussion
Director Bio
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.