Modern Music Ensemble

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.

Yongwoo Lee explores new sonic territories across instrumental and electroacoustic music, spanning diverse disciplines with a background in the humanities and a practice in physical modeling and audio programming. His work is shaped by experience at CREAMA (Center for Research in Electro-Acoustic Music and Audio), two years of national service as a firefighter and interdisciplinary research on the translation of humanistic materials into musical language. His works and projects have been presented at international platforms including the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC, 2023/24/26), IRCAM Forum and other international concerts.

B.A in Composition – Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Holland (2021)
M.M in Composition – University of Washington (2024)
DMA in Composition – University of Washington (Expected 2027)

Yonatan Ron began his musical journey as a non-classically trained guitarist. He later studied music theory and classical guitar independently under composer and guitarist Ruben Seroussi, head of the composition department and Guitar performance department at Tel-Aviv University.

During the 2015 and 2016 concert seasons, Yonatan composed for Meitar Ensemble’s 'Tedarim Program' — and occasionally participated in the ‘CEME’ festival held by Meitar Ensemble, with master classes given by G.F Haas, Ivan Fedele, and Philippe Leroux, among others.
In his music, seemingly ordinary materials develop through gradational transformations, often to the point of unrecognizability. He employs techniques associated with early music and integrates harmonic and rhythmic trajectories to shape anticipation, leading the listener toward expectation only to ultimately deceive it. His approach reflects a deep attraction to gesture, where musical events emerge through calculated methods that balance spontaneity with structural control. Yonatan draws inspiration from fields beyond music, including visual arts, mathematics, and cognitive psychology—areas around which much of his research orbits.

His works are published in the ‘Israeli Composers League’ and are frequently commissioned by the Israeli Music Festival.

Ron received several awards, including:
• ‘CCC’ (Calefax Composition Contest) 1st Prize award - 2018.
• The Siday Fellowship for Musical Creativity – 2018 and 2019
• The Israeli Prime Minister Award for Music Composition - 2019
• 2nd prize for The Abraham and Felicija Klohn Prize – 2019
• The University of Washington Composition Contest 2024

Oliver Schoonover is a composer and pianist based in Seattle, Washington. He writes music that celebrates the musicality of everyday objects and the performer as a human being. He is especially interested in ASMR sounds, soft sounds that produce a tingling, static-like sensation.

Oliver is currently pursuing a master of music in composition at the University of Washington. Previously, he graduated from Florida State University with a B.M. in composition. His works have been performed by Polymorphia, the FSU Electric Chamber Orchestra, the St. John's Episcopal Church Compline Choir, at the FSU Festival of Creative Arts, and at TEDxFSU.

As a pianist, he has performed contemporary music with Polymorphia, the FSU Electric Chamber Orchestra, the FSU Wind Ensemble, and the UW Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band, and has performed at the FSU Festival of New Music, the FSU Festival of Creative Arts, and the FSU Panama City ASCENT Tech Expo.