Newly appointed UW strings faculty John Popham (cello) and Pala Garcia (violin) curate and perform a program of compelling new works and recent major commissions from their ensemble Longleash, an internationally acclaimed contemporary music trio recognized for their “immaculate sound” (Strad Magazine) and “tight playing and lucid interpretations” of innovative new chamber music (Tempo UK). They are joined onstage by triomate Mika Sasaki (piano) in presenting works by Anthony Cheung, Katherine Balch, and Igor Santos.
Program Detail
The program features Nossas Mãos (Our Hands), a work for trio and video by Igor Santos (Rome Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship). In it, Santos stitches together contemporary video clips, archival footage, and found visual references into quick fire mimetic cycles between video, sound and live performance, creating a playful and poignant exploration of hands as symbols of human agency, affection, protest, creative expression, and music making.
Program
Anthony Cheung
Flyway Detour (2006, revised 2017 for Longleash)
Katherine Balch
different gravities (2023)
i. Agile, crisp
ii. Fragile, sinking
iii. Jittery, mechanical
iv. Brisk, bells clanging
Commissioned by Longleash with support from The Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress
-break-
Igor Santos
Nossas Mãos (2024)
Commissioned by Longleash with support from Chamber Music America
Biographies
Anthony Cheung
Composer/pianist Anthony Cheung writes music that explores the senses, a wide palette of instrumental play and affect, improvisational traditions, reimagined musical artifacts, and multiple layers of textual meaning.
His music has been commissioned and performed by leading groups such as the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, the LA and New York Philharmonics, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Yarn/Wire, AMOC*, Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and many others. From 2015-17, he was the Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow with the Cleveland Orchestra. He is the recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as a 2012 Rome Prize, and received First Prize at the 2008 Dutilleux Competition. As a co-founder of New York’s Talea Ensemble, he served as pianist and artistic director of the group.
Recordings include five portrait discs: All Roads (New Focus, 2022), Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions (Kairos, 2022), Cycles and Arrows (New Focus), Dystemporal (Wergo), andRoundabouts (Ensemble Modern Medien). He studied at Harvard and Columbia, and was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He previously taught at the University of Chicago and is an Associate Professor of Music at Brown University.
Katherine Balch
Described as “some kind of musical Thomas Edison – you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop, putting together new sounds and textural ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle), composer Katherine Balch is interested in the intimacy of quotidian objects, found sounds, and natural processes. A collector of aural delights, field recordings are often at the heart of her work, which ranges from acoustic to mixed media and installation.
A recipient of the 2020/21 Rome Prize and a 2025 Guggenheim fellowship, Katherine’s work has been commissioned and performed by internationally leading ensembles and presenting organizations including the New York Philharmonic, Ensemble Modern, the London Sinfonietta, Tanglewood, Suntory Summer Arts (Japan), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK) and the symphony orchestras of Tokyo, Darmstadt, Minnesota, Oregon, Albany, Indianapolis, Pittsburg, and Dallas. Her music is published exclusively worldwide by Schott.
Katherine is Associate Professor of Composition at Yale School of Music and holds a D.M.A. from Columbia University.
Igor Santos
Described as “otherworldly and mysteriously familiar” (Chicago Classical Review), and as “exciting and clear... with a striking boldness" (Luigi Nono Competition Prize), Igor Santos’ music has been performed internationally, by leading musicians such as Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Dal Niente, Yarn/Wire, Alarm Will Sound, POING, the American Composers Orchestra, and The Florida Orchestra.
His work is centered on mimetic relationships between found sounds, acoustic instruments, and recently with video, all of which is dramatized through repetition and the use of microtonal keyboards.
Igor has earned degrees in Music Composition from the University of Chicago, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of South Florida. He has been awarded the Rome Prize (2022), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2023), and has won additional prizes such as the International Ferruccio Busoni Competition, the Luigi Nono International Competition, the RED NOTE Competition, the Salvatore Martirano Award, and was also awarded Best Sound Design from Theater Tampa Bay (for his incidental music).
Igor is a native of Curitiba, Brazil. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at Cornell University.
Longleash
An “expert trio” (Strad Magazine) known for “tight playing and lucid interpretations” (Tempo), Longleash enjoys an international reputation for artistic excellence in contemporary music. “Fearlessly accomplished” (Arts Desk UK), the trio takes its name from Operation Long Leash, a Cold War era covert operation that supported American avant-garde artists in Europe.
Recent highlights include appearances at the Noguchi Museum, TIME:SPANS Festival, Five Boroughs Music Festival, the Americas Society, Princeton University, Ecstatic Music Festival, National Sawdust, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (Troy, NY), Jeunesse (Vienna), Átlátszó Hang (Budapest), FUAIM Music (Cork, Ireland), Trondheim International Chamber Music Festival (Norway), and Open Music (Graz, Austria).
Their work in contemporary music has been supported by Columbia University, Chamber Music America, the Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress, New Music USA, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and others.
Mika Sasaki
Praised as a “superb interpreter” (Fanfare) and for her “virtuosity… and sparkling sound” (Times Argus), pianist Mika Sasaki enjoys a versatile career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator. She has performed across the U.S. and in the U.K., Italy, Japan, and Switzerland, appearing in venues such as the Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Tokyo Bunka Kaikan. Apassionate chamber musician, Mika has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Manhattan Chamber Players, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and A Far Cry, as well as in festivals such as Tanglewood, Chigiana, Yellow Barn, Aspen, Taos, and Music@Menlo. She is a member of Ensemble Mélange, Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston, Decoda (affiliate ensemble of Carnegie Hall), and Longleash. Dedicated to education and audience engagement, she has presented interactive performances at schools and community venues across the country, including residencies at String Theory, Skidmore, and Chamber Music Northwest.
Based in New York City, Mika is a faculty member at The Juilliard School, where she teaches keyboard skills, piano, and chamber music in the College, Pre-College, and Extension. She is an alumna of Peabody (B.M., M.M.), Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, and Juilliard (D.M.A.).
John Popham joins the School of Music faculty in Fall 2025 as Assistant Professor of Strings.
Popham, “a very fine artist” (Fanfare), is a critically acclaimed cellist and educator previously based in Brooklyn, NY. A versatile and dynamic performer, he has collaborated with a wide-range of composers, musicians, and performing artists both within the United States and abroad. His “brilliant” and “virtuosic” (Kronen Zeitung) playing can be heard on numerous solo and chamber music releases on Tzadik, Carrier, New Focus Recordings, Albany, and Arte Nova record labels. Critics have noted his “velvet tone,” “remarkable technique” (Fanfare), and “warm but variegated,” and “highly polished” artistry (The New York Times).
John is a founding member of Longleash, an “expert young trio” praised for its “subtle and meticulous musicianship” (Strad magazine). The trio has performed at venues including the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (Troy, NY), San Francisco’s Center for New Music, National Sawdust, (le) poisson rouge, Florentinersaal (Palais Meran), Aula Maxima (UCC Cork) as well as concert series with the Metropolitan Museum, the Kaufman Center (Ecstatic Music Festival), the Green Music Center (Sonoma), Scandinavia House (New York City), Open Music (Austria), and FUAIM (Ireland). Their debut album Passage earned wide critical acclaim, praising the trio’s performance as “fearlessly accomplished, the most outré effects realised with confident ease” (The Arts Desk) and “vividly maximizing the musicality and accessibility of uncompromisingly experimental pieces” (Textura). In 2017, they were named Best New Recording Artist by Sequenza21, and were included in The New Yorker’s list of “Notable Recordings and Performances.”
In addition to his work with Longleash, John is a current member of Either/Or Ensemble, and has performed with Klangforum Wien, Talea Ensemble, the Wet Ink Ensemble, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, and ECCE. Recent festival appearances include Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), reMusik (St. Petersburg), Beijing Modern Music Festival (China), Brücken (Austria), Internationales Musikfest Hamburg (Germany), Open Music (Austria), Wiener Festwochen (Austria), Bay Chamber (Maine), and the Contemporary Classical Music Festival (Peru).
He has appeared as soloist with the Louisville Orchestra, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, the Red Light Ensemble, and the Kunstuniversität Graz Chorus, and has worked with celebrated composers including Pierluigi Billone, Pierre Boulez, Beat Furrer, Georg Friedrich Haas, Klaus Lang, Fred Lerdahl. Tristan Murail, Steve Reich, Rebecca Saunders, Nils Vigeland, and Walter Zimmermann. A champion of young composers, he has collaborated with many of his generation’s most compelling voices including Anthony Cheung, Christopher Cerrone, Suzanne Farrin, Francesco Fillidei, Reiko Füting, Erin Gee, Ted Hearne, Mauro Hertig, Clara Iannotta, Zesses Seglias, Caroline Shaw, Cleek Schrey, Kate Soper, Johan Svensson, Christopher Trapani, Anthony Vine, Yukiko Watanabe, and Scott Wollschleger.
As an educator and arts advocate, John is committed to a holistic and socially engaged approach to musical instruction. In 2016, he joined the cello faculty of the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program, a program dedicated to nurturing the talents of students from backgrounds typically underrepresented in classical music. From 2018-21, John also served as the Juilliard School’s Artistic Administrator for Community Engagement, where he mentored Juilliard teaching fellows; produced interactive, multidisciplinary educational programs; and curated the school’s Young People’s Concert series. John co-directs The Loretto Project, an annual creative residency held at the Loretto Motherhouse in Nerinx, Kentucky.
John began his musical instruction in his hometown of Louisville, studying with cellist Wayne Krigger at the University of Louisville’s Preparatory Division. He received his BM and MM from the Manhattan School of Music where he was a student of David Geber and David Soyer and was awarded the Manhattan School of Music Full Scholarship. In 2013, he received a Fulbright Research Grant to study the performance practice of Austrian contemporary music ensemble Klangforum Wien. He received his DMA from the CUNY Graduate Center where he was awarded a dissertation distinction for “Sonorous Movement: Cellistic Corporealities in Works by Helmut Lachenmann, Simon Steen-Andersen, and Johan Svensson.”
Pala Garcia is a critically acclaimed violinist recently named a 2024 National Arts Club Fellow. She was also featured as a leading innovative artist in the Washington Post’s “23 for ’23: Performers and Composers to Watch.” Garcia previously served on the faculty of The Juilliard School’s Preparatory Division, on the violin and chamber music faculty of Hunter College, and as a teaching artist with Carnegie Hall’s social impact programs.
Alongside spouse John Popham, Garcia is a member, co-founder, and co-director of the chamber trio Longleash, which specializes in commissioning, performing and curating contemporary music. Their trio has performed internationally at venues such as the TIME:SPANS Festival, Kennedy Center, Kaufman Center, Noguchi Museum, National Sawdust, EMPAC, Princeton University, and others. The trio’s discography can be heard on New Focus Recordings, Innova, and New Amsterdam Records. Garcia has also appeared as a regular guest with world-class ensembles including the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and on stages such as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Guggenheim Museum, Met Museum, Skirball Center, Caramoor, and others.
Garcia received undergraduate and graduate degrees from The Juilliard School. She was also a Senior Teaching Fellow at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and an Academy Fellow with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.