University of Washington Residency
70th Birthday Concert for UW Professor of Composition Joël-François Durand and new student works
SMO returns to the University of Washington School of Music for their third annual residency. In addition to an open reading of works by undergraduate composers early in the week, the concert features new works by UW graduate student composers. This event also celebrates UW Composition Professor and School of Music Director Joël-François Durand’s 70th birthday. A group of seven instrumentalists presents the world premiere of several short tribute pieces by Durand’s former students, including longtime SMO contributors Jérémy Jolley, Jeff Bowen, and Yiğit Kolat alongside Eric Flesher and Ryan Hare, plus new poetry for the occasion by Helena Tibocha.
PROGRAM:
A Night of World Premieres by UW graduate students (TBA)
and
Byron Au Yong
Jeff Bowen
Eric Flesher
Jérémy Jolley
Ryan Hare
Yiğit Kolat
with poetry by Helena Tibocha
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ABOUT THE COMPOSERS:
Artist and educator Byron Au Yong (歐陽良仁) creates events Variety calls “intimate and existential, personal and political all at once.” He was born to Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh and raised in the Pacific Northwest. His upbringing informs an attention to the ways people gather to listen and connect with the places they call home.
Examples include Activist Songbook, to counteract hate and energize movements (Asian Arts Initiative, Hopkins Center for the Arts, International Festival of Arts & Ideas), The Ones, a.k.a. (Be)longing, a.k.a. Trigger, about coming of age in an age of guns (Virginia Tech Center for the Arts, MDC Live Arts), Piano Concerto—Houston, for 11 pianists (University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts), and Turbine, for more than 80 moving singers along the water (Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and Leah Stein Dance Company). The Seattle Weekly says his “interdisciplinary works are as exquisite and imaginative as they are unclassifiable.”
Honors include a Creative Capital Award and Sundance Institute/Time Warner Foundation Fellowship. Au Yong holds degrees in theater, dance, and music from NYU, UCLA, and the University of Washington. He is an Associate Professor and Director of Arts Leadership at Seattle University.
Jeffrey Bowen is a composer and guitarist currently living in Seattle, Washington. His compositions feature gradually evolving processes and explorations of liminal spaces, and have been performed by Pascal Gallois, Maja Cerar, Beta Collide, Seattle Modern Orchestra, and the Luminosity Orchestra, among other artists and ensembles in the USA and Europe. In 2013 his orchestral work Stalasso was chosen by conductor Ludovic Morlot for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Works program, and he has recently presented work at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, the University of Washington’s Harry Partch Festival, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, the International Computer Music Conference, the SEAMUS national conference, and as a resident artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. In 2019 he received a Jack Straw Artist Support Grant to record his piece for the Harry Partch Instruments, Where All That’s Solid Melts Into Air, and his work What Will Sound (was already sound), for violin and electronics, was released by Parma Records in 2020. His music has been recognized with a First Prize in the 30th International Composition Competition “Città di Barletta,” and with second prizes from the European Composer Competition in 2021 and from the American Prize in 2023. Born in 1987 in St. Louis, Missouri, he studied classical guitar with William Ash from 1996-2006. He received a B.A. from Stanford University, where he studied classical guitar with Charles Ferguson and composition with Jaroslaw Kapuscinski and Mark Applebaum. He completed a D.M.A. in composition from the University of Washington under Joël-François Durand, and is currently based in Seattle, where he has taught courses in music history, music theory, and composition at the University of Washington and Cornish College of the Arts, currently teaches music theory and guitar at Seattle University, and is co-director of the Inverted Space Ensemble. He is active in Seattle as a performer on classical and electric guitars, playing new works and 20th-century repertoire with Inverted Space, the Seattle Modern Orchestra, Universal Language Project, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra, and recently as a soloist with the UW Wind Ensemble and Tacoma’s Luminosity Orchestra.
French-American composer Jérémy Jolley was born in Lyon, France, and grew up in the French Alps where he played guitar in rock and fusion bands. He moved to Seattle in 1997 and pursued composition studies and received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Music degrees in Composition from the University of Washington. During these years, he studied composition primarily with Joël-François Durand, electronic music with Juan Pampin, and classical guitar with Steven Novacek. His music has been played by celebrated contemporary music performers such as the Dutch pianist and ensemble ASKO|SHOENBERG member René Eckhart, cellist Séverine Ballon, violinist Graeme Jennings, and clarinetist Carol Robinson. He attended the masterclasses of Brian Ferneyhough, Chaya Czernowin, Pierluigi Billone, and Mark André at the Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse. From 2010 to 2024, he was the co-Artistic Director of Seattle Modern Orchestra. He is currently the Senior Director of Education and Community Engagement at the Seattle Symphony leading numerous community-centered initiatives including community composition projects with Derek Bermel, Alexandra Gardner, Charles Corey, Janice Giteck, Swil Kanim, and Paul Chiyokten Wagner.
Ryan M. Hare, composer and bassoonist, was born in Reno, Nevada in 1970, and now lives in Pullman, Washington. He earned tenure and the rank of full Professor at Washington State University, where he taught composition, bassoon, and music theory from 2003 until 2020, when he decided to take a voluntary early retirement in order to focus his attention on composing. Ryan’s music has been performed at a large variety of venues and festivals, in as diverse locations as Tokyo, Japan, and Darmstadt, Germany, as well as Southeast Asia and China. Commissioners include Fred Korman, longtime former principal oboist of the Oregon Symphony, and the Washington Music Teachers Association, who awarded Ryan “Washington State Composer of the Year” in 2012. Further commissions have come from the Walla Walla Symphony, Mid-Columbia Symphony, Washington Idaho Symphony, Common Tone Arts, Affinity Chamber Players, the University of Idaho Vandaleers Concert Choir, and the Lake Forest College Orchestra, among others. His music has been championed by numerous other well-known performers and ensembles around the world, with notable recognition from New Music USA, Artist Trust, and the American Prize. In addition, a number of Ryan’s compositions are published by TrevCo Music Publishing and ALEA Publishing. Before earning the degree Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition in 2000 at the University of Washington, Ryan M. Hare earned a Master of Music degree in Composition at Ithaca College, and a Bachelor of Arts degree with an emphasis in composition at Oregon State University. Ryan’s principal teachers in composition include Joël-François Durand, Diane Thome, Richard Karpen, Greg Woodward, and Ron Jeffers. Additional composition studies were also undertaken with Shulamit Ran and Jacob Druckman, both visiting professors at Ithaca College, and Brian Ferneyhough and Paul-Heinz Dittrich at the 1996 Ferienkurse für neue Musik, Darmstadt, Germany.
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.