Modern Music Ensemble

The University of Washington Modern Music Ensemble (Cristina Valdés, director) performs music by Jean Ahn, Arnold Schoenberg, Eva-Maria Houben, Rebecca Saunders, Charles Ives, Erin Gee, and Golfam Khayam. 

Program

Salt for improvisers and piano (2007/2016): Jean Ahn (b. 1976)
Rachel Reyes, flute
Cameron DeLuca, clarinet
Cole Henslee, tuba
Taylor DeCastro, violin
Olivia Hsu, piano
Tyler Smith, percussion

Songs from Book of the Hanging Gardens Op.15 (1908-1909) - Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951)
No. 3 - MäBig 
No. 4 - Gahend
Cassidy Cheong, voice
Ella Kalinichenko, piano

Erwartung 3 (2018) -  Eva-Maria Houben (b. 1955) 
Rachel Reyes, flute
Cameron DeLuca, clarinet
Cole Henslee, tuba
Taylor DeCastro, violin
Ella Kalinichenko, piano
Tyler Smith, percussion

The Underside of Green (1994) -  Rebecca Saunders (b. 1967)
Cameron DeLuca, clarinet
Taylor DeCastro, violin
Ella Kalinichenko, piano

— intermission —

Largo, Op. 73 for violin, clarinet, and piano (1902) - Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Cameron DeLuca, clarinet
Taylor DeCastro, violin
Ella Kalinichenko, piano

Mouthpiece 28 (2016) - Erin Gee  (b. 1974)
Cassidy Cheong, voice
Rachel Reyes, flute
Cameron DeLuca, clarinet
Taylor DeCastro, violin
Tyler Smith, percussion

Lost Wind (2019) - Golfam Khayam (b. 1982)
Rachel Reyes, flute
Tyler Smith, percussion

Program Notes

Salt for improvisers and piano (2007/2016)
Salt began its life in 2005, when I found myself driven by a chord of six notes. First I made a progression moving the chord by parallel motion. Then I changed the inner voices, rotated the notes, inverted the chord, juxtaposed it with its mirror and other transpositions of the chord, and added more notes to the chord. To color the chord, I added non-harmonic tones as ornamentation. These non-harmonic tones normally resolve to the harmonic tones, and thus end up doubling the chord tones themselves. In short, I experimented with all the possibilities opened up by this one chord. The idea of transforming a single chord without losing its fundamentals, combined with the sparkling image of the ornaments, reminded me of the properties of salt. Thus was born the title of the composition. Just as salt preserves its taste no matter what it is mixed with, the essence of the original chord of the piece is not lost throughout the entire work. In order to enhance the metaphor, the electronics used in the piece—built on the resonance model of the main chord with spectral transformation—employ the actual sound of dropping, spreading and touching salt. Finally, the title Salt also reflects my Christian faith and my musing on the words “Ye are the salt of the earth.” Thus the piece has the touch, taste and also the meaning of salt.
—Jean Ahn

Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (Book of Hanging Gardens), Op. 15
Arnold Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (Book of Hanging Gardens), Op. 15, is a landmark work in the composer’s early period, marking a significant turning point in his development as a modernist. Composed between 1908 and 1909, this song cycle is set to a German translation of poems by the Austrian poet Stefan George. Consisting of 15 songs for voice and piano, the cycle unfolds the story of a failed love affair - tragically ending with the woman's departure and the disintegration of the garden, which serves as the symbolic landscape for the narrative.

In Songs No. 3 and No. 4, the protagonist’s emotional journey to reach his beloved is portrayed. The third song reveals the lover’s emotional vulnerability, awe, and yearning for acceptance. Schoenberg accentuates this internal struggle with jagged dissonances and a persistent rhythmic motive that propels the music forward, mirroring the protagonist’s anxious longing. In the fourth song, the lover contemplates a profound emotional state characterized by both desire and inhibition. Schoenberg’s highly chromatic setting intensifies the sense of yearning and spiritual surrender. At times, the piano often doubles the voice, creating an intimate, almost confessional sonority. In other moments, Schoenberg employs wide vocal glissandos, further amplifying the internal turmoil and the tension between restraint and overwhelming emotion.

erwartung 3 (2018)
Known for her introspective approach to composition, Eva-Maria Houben (b. 1955) draws inspiration from Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung, Op. 15 for the aptly titled erwartung 3 for ensemble. Schoenberg’s one-act monodrama Erwartung concerns an apprehensive woman searching for her lost lover in a dark forest only to discover he has passed away. Houben presents a dense chord taken directly from Schoenberg, but gives the ensemble directions to use this chord as “a kind of landscape. exploring a still undiscovered landscape. entering a world that is not yet known. encountering (perhaps) something unknown. detecting where music might be found.” Further directions encourage performers to enjoy “the beauty and fragility of one’s own sounds” and the “neighbourhoods and distances in the midst of the ensemble.” In Houben’s sound world, the intense emotions of Schoenberg’s original Erwartung can take a new life. 

the underside of green (1994)
„At this juncture we ought to say something about lights and colours. It is evident that colours vary according to light, as every colour appears different when in shade, and placed under rays of light. Shade makes a colour dimmer, and light makes it brighter and clear. Colour is swallowed by the dark.“

 Loeon Battista Alberti: On painting (1435)
 „Emerald, Ruby, Jacinth, Chalcedony, Jasper. Colour, like these jewels, is precious. Even more precious, it cannot be possessed. Colour slips through the fingers and escapes. You can´t lock it in a jewel box as it vanishes in the dark.“

Derek Jarman: Chroma (1994)
the underside of green, CRIMSON – Molly´s Song 1 (1995) and Molly´s Song 3 – shades of crimson (1996) make up a cycle of compositions that were influenced by Molly Bloom´s closing monologue in James Joyce´s Ulysses. This relentless and intense monologue flows unpunctuated for 35 pages: 

„...and O that awful deep down torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and ...yes ...“  
— Rebecca Saunders

Largo, Op. 73 for violin, clarinet, and piano (1902)
Composed during the early years of his career, Largo was originally the second movement of a violin sonata Charles Ives wrote while he was a student at Yale. He later revised it for violin, clarinet, and piano, and first published it in 1901 (though some sources date it to 1902). It stands as one of Ives' early works, written at a time when he was starting to experiment with more unconventional musical ideas. While the piece is purely instrumental, without the folk tunes or hymns often associated with his later works, it still reflects Ives' growing interest in expanding the modern traditions.

Largo follows the form of a classical slow movement, beginning and ending in G Major with a calm, lyrical theme for violin and piano. The clarinet enters at a faster andante tempo, leading into a lively ragtime section that introduces all three instruments. The music is marked by complex meters in the piano and asymmetrical melodic lines in the violin and clarinet, resulting in dissonant counterpoint and a distinctly twentieth-century sound.

Lost Wind (2019)
"Lost Wind" (2019) is a hidden monologue

A monologue within oneself as reflected in resonance of the Gong…

Wandering in thoughts, lost in its own land, whispering the scream, shouting out the silence... Finding rays of light, a breeze of hope…

In Darkness, in lightness.
—Golfam Khayam

Mouthpiece 28 (2016)
The Mouthpieces began as solo vocal works, devoid of semantic text or language and notated with the International Phonetic Alphabet. In the Mouthpiece series, the voice is an instrument of sound production rather than a vehicle of identity. Linguistic meaning is not the goal. The construction of the vocal text is often based on linguistic structure—vowel-consonant formation and the principle of the allophone—and is relatively quiet, with an emphasis on the breath. My goal has been to construct intricate and subtle patterns of a diverse array of vocal sounds. 

I work with a concept I created, called the "super mouth", in which the instrumental sounds imitate and expand the possibilities of the solo vocal sounds. The mouth and voice can make pops/whispers and can sing and whistle etc., but when the entire ensemble becomes like a "super mouth", it can combine the changing "tone", the percussive, and the airy elements of the voice and mix them with similar sounds performed by the musicians, creating a sound world that is more expansive and varied than what a single voice could create alone.

In the works for voice and ensemble, the articulatory possibilities of the mouth are often mapped onto the instruments, mirroring and expanding the vocal sounds to form a kind of "super-mouth" that can move beyond the physical limitations of a single vocal tract. Merging the voice with both the instruments and with breath, and repeatedly returning to formlessness through “a more (or less) pronounced utterance of the mouth”. Degrees of pronounced utterance.  This has been the main idea behind the entire Mouthpiece series, which began in 2000 and consists of about 30 works for solo voice, voice and ensemble, choir, voice and orchestra, string quartet, opera and other combinations.  Not pre-meaning, simply never in the direction of meaning. 
—Erin Gee

Composer Biographies

Jean Ahn (b. 1976)
A native of Korea, composer Jean Ahn (b. 1976) began her music studies in piano and composition at an early age. Her creative output includes works ranging from solo instruments and chamber music to full orchestra, as well as choral, dance, and electroacoustic music. She received First Prize at the Renée Fisher Competition and the Sejong Korean Music Competition. She has also received awards from the the Korean National Music Composers Association, the De Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition, and the Isadora Duncan Award for  Saltdoll.  She was a Finalist for the Toulmin Prize (League of Orchestra Commissioning Competition) in 2019 and 2020, and was a Finalist for the American Prize. 

She is the director of Ensemble ARI and is a lecturer at UC Berkeley.  She is also the music director for CHIM studio, teaching music to special needs students.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was an Austrian composer and painter. Much of Schoenberg's music was not understood at first, and it is a known historical fact that many of his orchestras were received poorly at their first performance, yet the second performance would attract all sorts of praise. Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique would be used by several decorated musicians, including Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, and his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern. His collaborations with Alban Berg and Anton Webern were marked by twelve-tone compositions, along with some works that bordered on Mahlerian Romanticism. Thus, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern were given the title of ‘The Second Viennese School’ for their exceptional influence in music.
—Noel Morris

Eva-Maria Houben (b. 1955)
Eva-Maria Houben (b. 1955) studied Music Education at Folkwang-Musikhochschule Essen and the organ with Gisbert Schneider. Following her exams she taught both German and Music Education at Secondary School. She received her doctorate and postdoctoral lecturing qualification in musicology and was called for lectures at Gerhard-Mercator-Universität Duisburg and Robert-Schumann-Hochschule Düsseldorf. Since 1993 she has been lecturing at Dortmund University`s “Institut für Musik und Musikwissenschaft”, with both music theory and contemporary music as her focus. She performs works for organ and piano, as soloist as well as a member of duo, trio, ensemble.

Rebecca Saunders (b.1967)
With her distinctive and intensely striking sonic language, Berlin-based British composer Rebecca Saunders (b.1967) is a leading international representative of her generation.
Saunders pursues an intense interest in the sculptural and spatial properties of organised sound and seeks a close collaborative dialogue with a variety of contemporary musicians and artists.
Born in London, she studied composition with Nigel Osborne and Wolfgang Rihm. Saunders has received numerous prizes, including the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 2019, and most recently received the Golden Lion for Music from the Venice Biennale 2024. She received an Honorary Doctorate from the Universities of Huddersfield in 2018 and Edinburgh in 2023. She is a member of the Academies of Arts in Berlin, Dresden and Munich.

Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1874, Charles Ives pursued what is perhaps one of the most extraordinary and paradoxical careers in American music history. Businessman by day and composer by night, Ives’s vast output has gradually brought him recognition as the most original and significant American composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, Ives sought a highly personalized musical expression through the most innovative and radical technical means possible. A fascination with bi-tonal forms, poly-rhythms, and quotation was nurtured by his father who Ives would later acknowledge as the primary creative influence on his musical style. Studies at Yale with Horatio Parker guided expert control over large-scale forms. Ironically, much of Ives’s work would not be heard until his virtual retirement from music and business in 1930 due to severe health problems. The conductor Nicolas Slonimsky, music critic Henry Bellamann, pianist John Kirkpatrick and the composers Lou Harrison and Henry Cowell all played a key role in introducing Ives’s music to a wider audience. In 1947, Ives was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 3, according to him a much deserved modicum of international renown. By his death in 1954, he had witnessed a rise from obscurity to a position of unsurpassed eminence among the world’s leading performers and musical institutions.
—Richard E. Rodda

Golfam Khayam (b. 1982)
Iranian composer & improviser, Golfam Khayam's (b. 1982) career reflects her unique musical language through the integration of her native musical elements within a contemporary experimental musical framework. Golfam has appeared extensively as performer, composer, and her music is being performed worldwide, spreading her musical message in various projects which has been featured as in Elbphilharmonie, NPR ”songs we love", Danish Cultural Radio, BBC3, Deutchewele, Royal Festival Hall, Ojai festival.

Winner of numerous competitions, scholarships, and prizes. She has been named as the selected composer at the International Music Council, Rostrum of composers in the "Windows on the World" category in 2016 based in Paris. Winner of Residency in Festival Aix en Provence. She received HES-SO full fellowship award for the research project of  "New Vocabulary" shedding light on the concept of synthesis and cross culture fusion in contemporary music . She has been actively giving workshops on the subject of improvisation and synthesis as guest lecturer which includes Aarhus Royal Academy, Copenhagen Royal Music Academy, Geneva University, Luzern Music University. She is selected as composer in residence for ENOA network for Opera creation journey with Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. She is currently Assistant Professor at Art University of Tehran.

Erin Gee (b. 1974)
Erin Gee (b. 1974) was named to the short list of the most prominent composer-vocalists of the twenty-first century by Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, in January 2014, and has subsequently received a Koussevitsky award, a Bogliasco Fellowship and the Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is best known for her Mouthpiece Series, which is a series of 37 pieces and growing. In these works, Erin Gee constructs elaborate and nuanced patterns of a variety of vocal sounds using non-traditional vocal methods. None of the vocal sounds are meant to convey meaning and the voice is employed, rather, as a sound instrument, not a vehicle of identity. In the Mouthpieces, the voice does not seek to convey linguistic meaning, aiming instead for esthetic, cognitive, and emotional resonances. 

The Mouthpieces started out as solo vocal compositions and is notated using the International Phonetic Alphabet. It all began with a single solo voice piece in 2000, which she first performed as a graduate student, and has since grown to works for orchestra, opera, vocal ensemble, large chamber ensemble, and string quartet, all of which have been performed internationally with some of the best new music ensembles. Many renowned colleges, including MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Smith College, and Mills College, teach her works in their composition and musicology departments, and she has lectured at Harvard, UC Berkeley, Dartmouth, and Wellesley. 

A Guggenheim fellow, Rome Prize Fellow and Radcliffe Fellow, Erin Gee studied with Beat Furrer in Graz, Austria and received her Ph.D. from the Kunstuniversität Graz in 2007.

Director Biography