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SEATTLE, WA – Seattle Modern Orchestra will produce its eleventh season with six ambitious commissions and six concert broadcasts. The lineup of composers includes Iranian composer Anahita Abbasi, Cornish faculty member Tom Baker, saxophonist and composer Darius Jones, cellist and composer Ha-Yang Kim, Brown University assistant professor Wang Lu, and SMO co-artistic director, Jérémy Jolley. 

This season is flexible by design in order to ensure the health of our musicians and community. Each program is centered around commissioned works that can be performed socially distanced on stage or remotely. The decision of whether each individual event will take place in person or virtually, as well as the full program for each performance, will be made based on evolving community health guidelines throughout the season. 

“New compositions have always been created for their contemporary technologies and spaces. While the current performance paradigm is new, the creativity and humanity of the artists will explore, challenge, and bear witness to today’s experience,” noted SMO co-artistic director, Jérémy Jolley. 

SMO 2020-2021 SEASON 

Virtual Concert #1 – Tom Baker’s Simultaneously Solitary (Shendos No. 14) 
Friday, Oct. 23, 2020 @ 7:30pm

Our first virtual concert of the season will include the world premiere of Tom Baker’s Simultaneously Solitary. The work is No. 14 in his series of compositions titled Shendos, which explore a graphical notation system that provides a framework for improvisation. The performance features stellar musicians versatile in both the jazz and classical music realms such as James Falzone (clarinet), Raymond Larson (trumpet), Maria Ritzenthaler (viola), Abbey Blackwell (bass), and Bonnie Whiting (percussion). The concert will also feature solo and duo works by SMO ensemble members.

Virtual Concert #2 – This is Beethoven: Farrin, Wang, & Kagel
Dec. 16-19, 2020

Our second concert will be a part of a city-wide Beethoven Festival, curated by Emerald City Music, celebrating the 250th birthday of this iconic classical composer. SMO will present music as revolutionary, critical, and responsive in our time as Beethoven was in his time. The program includes Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van (1970), a tribute to Beethoven on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth. The indeterminate “meta-collage” of Beethoven’s music challenges the performers not only in their technical virtuosity but also their ability to recreate music as composers themselves. The concert will also feature a new work by Chinese composer and pianist, Wang Lu. Wang, Professor of Music at Brown University, has received many awards including the Berlin Prize in Music Composition, 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation and the Fromm Foundation. This new work will explore Wang’s personal relationship with the music of Beethoven and is a response to its ideals using her own aesthetic and musical language. The concert will open with American composer Suzanne Farrin who disrupts the romantic idealization of Petrach’s sonnet on Apollo and Daphne in her work for viola and percussion, uscirmi di braccia (leave my arms). 

Virtual Concert #3 – Jeremy Jolley’s (contro-)clessidra I, III, IV.
Sunday, Jan. 31, 2021 @ 7:30pm

Our third concert will be a live broadcast from Town Hall Seattle, featuring SMO’s own co-artistic director, Jérémy Jolley, in his new work (contro-)clessidra I, III, IV. The work explores the tension between “being together” and “being apart,” individualities and community, listening and being heard. The (contro-)clessidra series, (reverse-hourglass), is a set of duets (violin and electric guitar; piano and fixed media; cello and percussion) that are composed independently but can be performed all at once, separated, or dove-tailed in any order. The concert will also include Chen-Hui Jen‘s Across & Between II and Alvin Singleton‘s Greed Machine.

Virtual Concert #4 – Ha-Yang Kim’s the day is burnt, the night is calm 
Sunday, Mar. 14, 2021 @ 7:30pm

Our fourth concert, also a live broadcast from Town Hall Seattle, features the local multifaceted cellist, composer, and improvisor, Ha-Yang Kim. Kim creates her own music based on a unique musical language of extended string techniques which she developed. Her musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, jazz and improvised music, to non-western musical sources. This new work, composed for violin, viola, cello, bass, harp, and electric guitar, explores the sonic wonderland of microtuning.

Virtual Concert #5 – Darius Jones’ World Premiere
Saturday, May 1, 2021 @ 7:30pm

Our fifth concert returns to the artistic collaboration between SMO and experimental saxophonist and composer, Darius Jones. After the powerful performance of his LawNOrder last fall as part of the Earshot Jazz festival, where SMO’s performance was described as “delectable, eclectic” by Paul de Barros in Downbeat magazine, we will continue our musical partnership by commissioning a brand new work for SMO, to be streamed live from Seattle’s beloved Royal Room. Jones’ music embraces individuality and innovation in the tradition of African-American music and is at times dramatic commentary on social justice and American politics. This new work will coincide with May Day and represent the voices of the people.  

Virtual Concert #6 – Anahita Abbasi’s World Premiere
Sunday, June 6, 2021 @ 7:30pm

Our final concert of the season highlights the up-and-coming Iranian composer, Anahita Abbasi, whose music has been played by prominent ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien musicians, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. SMO will premiere a new “game piece” further exploring her 2017 work Enigma Patterns which is a tribute to the brilliant and intelligent women in Bletchley, England, who cracked the German code using telex-machines during WWII. The new work will consist of different types of packs of “cards,” which can be performed in a different order each time. 

SMO Virtual Season Pass: $50 / Single Tickets: $10

For more information, please visit: www.seattlemodernorchestra.org.

Founded in 2010, Seattle Modern Orchestra (SMO) is the only large ensemble in the Pacific Northwest solely dedicated to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Led by co-artistic directors Julia Tai and Jérémy Jolley, SMO commissions and premieres new works from an international lineup of composers, in addition to presenting important pieces from the contemporary repertoire that are rarely if ever heard by Seattle audiences. The ensemble “operates at that exciting cusp between old and new, between tradition and innovation” (Vanguard Seattle) curating new sounds and experiences for concert goers in the region.

SMO provides audiences with performances of the best in contemporary chamber and orchestral music, and develops blog posts, lectures, and other forms of community engagement in an accessible and inviting format all designed to expand the listener’s appreciation and awareness of the music of today.

COMPOSERS BIOGRAPHIES 

Anahita Abbasi, Composer
Anahita Abbasi’s music has been commissioned and performed by distinguished soloists and ensembles such as Mahan Esfahani, Steven Schick, Ensemble Modern, Mivos Quartet, and the International Contemporary Ensemble, and has been showcased at festivals all around the world including Mostly Mozart Festival, The Kitchen, Kennedy Center, Lincoln center, Time Span, Soundnow festival- Bent Frequency, Mise-En festival (USA), Darmstadt Ferienkurse (Germany), Ircam – Manifeste Academy (France), and many others.

A recipient of a 2015 Morton Gold ASCAP young composers award, Ms. Abbasi was also nominated in 2017 at the Cairo Contemporary Festival as one of the “women composers of our time” alongside Kaija Saariaho and Isabel Mundry. Aside from teaching composition and giving lectures and workshops on fundamentals of creation, she is also the founding member of Schallfeld Ensemble in Graz, Austria as well as IFCA (Iranian Female Composers Association) in New York City where she is curating concerts, creating platforms and advocating for young composers, acting as their ambassador in presenting their music to others. 

Anahita Abbasi was born and raised in Iran. In 2005 she moved to Austria and pursued her undergraduate degree at the University of music and performing Arts Graz, where she studied music theory with Clemens Gadenstätter and Christian Utz and composition with Beat Furrer and Pierluigi Billone, while working closely with Georges Aperghis, Franck Bedrossian, and Philippe Leroux. Abbasi is currently residing in San Diego and finishing her Ph.D. in composition under the supervision of Rand Steiger at the University of California San Diego.

Tom Baker, Composer/Guitarist/Improviser/Electronicist/Educator
Tom Baker has been active as a composer, performer, and producer in the Seattle new-music scene since arriving in 1994. He is the artistic director of the Seattle Composers’ Salon, co-founder of the Seattle EXperimental Opera (SEXO), an advisory board member of the Washington Composers’ Forum, founder of the new-music recording label Present Sounds Recordings, and is currently professor of composition at Cornish College of the Arts.

Tom has received awards and grants for his work from many organizations, including Meet The Composer, the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, 4Culture, and Artist Trust. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida and the Montalvo Arts Center in California. His works have been performed throughout the United States, in Canada, and in Europe.

Tom is also active as a performer and improviser, specializing in fretless guitar and live-electronics. He has recorded seven albums, including two solo records. Triptet, a trio with Michael Monhart and Greg Campbell, recently released its third album, Figure in the Carpet, on Brooklyn-based Engine Records. Tom has worked with many innovative musicians, including Stuart Dempster, William O. Smith, Christian Asplund, Chinary Ung, Ellen Fullman, Matana Roberts, and Henry Threadgill.

Jérémy Jolley, Composer
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. 

Jeremy has been awarded the Brechemin Scholarship in Music, the William Bergsma Endowment for Excellence in Music Composition, and a residency in the 2008 Jack Straw Artist Support Program for his work in the improvisation and experimental ensemble, Unused Lexical Variable. 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 has attended master classes with Brian Ferneyhough, Chaya Czernowin, Pierluigi Billone, and Mark André at the Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse. 

Since 2010, he has been the co-Artistic Director of the new music ensemble, Seattle Modern Orchestra. He has also been Associate Director of Artistic Collaborations at the Seattle Symphony since 2017, leading numerous community centered initiatives including community composition projects with Derek Bermel, Alexander Gardner, Charles Corey, Janice Giteck, Swil Kanim, and Paul Chiyokten Wagner.

Darius Jones, Alto saxophonist/Composer
Over the past decade, Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of African-American music. “Jones’ concept is proudly his own,” writes Philip Clark in The Wire. “[His music] poses big questions about the relationship between the African-American tradition of spirituals, blues and gospel, and now.” With New York City as his base since 2005, Jones has brought his unique sound to dozens of cities around the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Jones early on established himself as a powerful voice in the jazz community and was nominated in 2013 for Alto Saxophonist of the Year, and for Up & Coming Artist of the Year two years in a row for the Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards. More recently The New York Times named Jones among the Best Live Jazz Performances of 2017 for his Vision Festival performance with Farmers by Nature.

Jones has collaborated with artists including Gerald Cleaver, Oliver Lake, William Parker, Trevor Dunn, Branford Marsalis, Steve Lehman, Sun Ra Arkestra, and many more. Signed to AUM Fidelity records in 2009, Jones has released a string of diverse recordings which comprise his Man’ish Boy Epic, featuring music and images evocative of Black Futurism. Darius’ 2012 release, Book of Mæ’bul (Another Kind of Sunrise) was listed among NPR’s Best Top 10 Jazz Albums of that year.

Jones graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelors in Jazz Studies in 2003, earning a Master’s Degree in Jazz Performance/Composition from New York University in 2008, where he also taught New Music Improvisation for a year as an adjunct professor. Jones taught saxophone and improvisation at Columbia University in 2017.

Ha-Yang Kim, Cellist/Composer/Collaborative Artist
Drawing from a breadth of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, electronic, noise, avant-improv, to non-western sources (Balinese, South Indian, and Korean), Kim’s music is inspired by acoustic phenomena, ritual ceremonial processes, and characterized by an organic visceral lyricism of sound influenced by the East Asian sense of space and emptiness. She developed a unique signature language of extended string techniques and has also composed music for film, dance, and multimedia. Her current practice involves explorations in tunings, and researching acoustical and spatial phenomenology of resonance-amplification-feedback.  

Kim’s music is performed throughout the US, Europe, Asia, Russia, Turkey, Morocco, Bali, Cuba, and Canada. The diverse range of artists Kim has worked with include Meredith Monk, Terry Riley, Alvin Lucier, Bang on a Can All-Stars, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Kronos Quartet, indie-rock band The National, poet Anne Waldman, choreographer Douglas Dunn, video artist Ursula Scherrer, and pop superstar Beyoncè. Kim has recorded over 25 albums, for labels such as ECM, Tzadik, New World, Cold Blue, Beggars Banquet, New Albion, Brassland, Karnatic Lab, and Bridge Records.

Dedicated to cross-cultural exchange, social transformation, and education, Kim has conducted workshops with Berber youth communities in Morocco, performed at youth detention centers in the Bronx supported by the Ford  Foundation, performed alongside gamelan orchestras in Bali, and performed for the UN Humanitarian Aid Campaign.  

Kim studied at the New England Conservatory where her mentors included Joseph Maneri, Lee Hyla, and Michael Gandolfi, and the application of Carnatic music concepts to contemporary music at the Amsterdam Conservatorium. Currently, she lives in Seattle, Washington, and is on the music faculty at the Cornish College of the Arts. 

Wang Lu, Composer/Pianist
Composer and pianist Wang Lu writes music that reflects a very natural identification with influences from traditional Chinese music, urban environmental sounds, linguistic intonation and contours, and freely improvised traditions, through the prism of contemporary instrumental techniques and new sonic possibilities.

She is currently the David S. Josephson Assistant Professor of Music at Brown University, after receiving her doctoral degree in composition at Columbia University and graduating from the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music. Wang Lu’s works have been performed internationally, by ensembles including the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Alarm Will Sound, American Composers Orchestra, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Ensemble Dal Niente, the Aizuri Quartet, violinist Jennifer Koh, and many others. Wang Lu has received the Berlin Prize in Music Composition (Spring 2019 residency), was a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, and has received commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress and the Fromm Foundation at Harvard. 

In 2019, her music was featured on portrait concerts at Miller Theater with ICE and Yarn/Wire, with Ensemble Recherche in Paris, and with Ensemble Mosaik plus soloists Ryan Muncy and Wu Wei in Berlin. Some of Wang Lu’s recent compositions include a brass fanfare Code Switch for the opening of the Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW 2019-20 season, a flute and electronic piece for Claire Chase’s Density 2036, and a new work for the Talea Ensemble commissioned by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University. Wang Lu is the next Vanguard Emerging Opera Composer at the Chicago Opera Theatre, and her residency will conclude in 2022 with a full-length opera produced by the Chicago Opera Theatre.

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