Sonidos: Music of the Americas
Seattle Modern Orchestra presents an evening of dynamic chamber music from across the Americas. Curated by Cristina Valdés, longtime SMO pianist and founder of the Seattle Latin American Music Festival, this program features music by composers with roots in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Argentina. Works by Angélica Negrón and Luis Fernando Amaya utilize electroacoustic soundscapes, José-Luis Hurtado’s Retour invites SMO musicians to explore individualized timbral worlds, and the music of Silvina Milstein and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez offers the thrill of intricate chamber music dialogue.
PERFORMERS:
Maria Mannisto, soprano
Sarah Pyle, flute
Angelique Poteat, clarinet
Jordan Voelker, viola
Christine Lee, cello
Marcin Pączkowski , electronics
Bonnie Whiting, percussion
Cristina Valdes, piano
PROGRAM:
ANGÉLICA NEGRÓN Espacios, objetos, sonidos y tiempo for flute, percussion, piano, cello, and electronics (2021)
CARLOS SANCHEZ-GUTIERREZ Trio Variations for flute, clarinet, and piano (2005)
SILVINA MILSTEIN cristales y susurros (whispers and crystals) for quintet (2007) US premiere
LUIS FERNANDO AMAYA Bestiario: seis for soprano, flute, clarient, percussion, and electronics (2020)
JOSÉ-LUIS HURTADO Retour for seven instruments (2013)
Curated by Cristina Valdés
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS:
Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys, and electronics as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras, choir, and film. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2) while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise.” Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Kronos Quartet, loadbang, MATA Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the American Composers Orchestra, and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. She has composed numerous film scores, including Landfall (2020) and Memories of a Penitent Heart (2016), in collaboration with filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo. She was the recipient of the 2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. Upcoming premieres include works for the Seattle Symphony, LA Philharmonic, NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative and multiple performances at Big Ears Festival 2022. Negrón continues to perform and compose for film.
Born in Buenos Aires (1956), Silvina Milstein lives in Cambridge. She emigrated to Britain after the Argentinian military coup of 1976. At Glasgow University her main composition teachers were Judith Weir and Lyell Cresswell. Later she studied under Alexander Goehr, with whom she has also carried out extensive research into the music of Schoenberg. She is now a Professor of Music at King’s College London.
An important strand in her music is the use of evocative gestures that draw on the vernacular music of Buenos Aires, a procedure which she evolved in musica ciudadana (1995) and a media luz (2000) as a means of furnishing a composition with a sense of modality. These pieces are like kaleidoscopic collages made out of evocative fragments of characteristic rhythms, turns of phrase and sonorities from Argentinian popular music (tango, milonga, bolero), embodied in textures inspired by the music of the Second Viennese School.
Her music has been played by some of the leading orchestras, ensembles and performers in Britain and abroad, such as Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), the London Sinfonietta, Lontano, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the BBC SSO, the BBC Singers, the Endellion, Darragh Morgan, and Jane Manning. Her compositions have been championed by the conductors Oliver Knussen and Odaline de la Martinez, who have been instrumental in the commissioning of many of them.
Winner of a 2020 John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Composer José-Luis Hurtado’s music has been played across continents by performers such as the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, JACK Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, CEPROMUSIC Ensemble, Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, Garth Knox, Claire Chase, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne and the Arditti String Quartet among many others. He has been the recipient of Kompositionspreis der Stadt Wolkersdorf (Austria), The Harvard University Green Prize for Excellence in Composition (USA), The Rodolfo Halffter Ibero American Composition Prize, the Micro-Jornadas de Composición y Música Contemporánea Prize (Argentina), the Julian Carrillo Composition Prize (Mexico), and 2nd prize in the Troisieme Concours International de composition du Quatuor Molinari (Canada). Grants and Fellowships include those from the National Fund for the Arts of Mexico, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (USA), the American Music Center, Ibermúsicas, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (Italy). Hurtado holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University where he studied under Davidovsky, Czernowin, Ferneyhough and Lachenmann. www.joseluishurtado.net
Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez was born in Mexico City in 1964 and now lives in the New York tundra, where he is a Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music. He studied with Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Steven Mackey and Henri Dutilleux at Yale, Princeton and Tanglewood, respectively. He has received many of the standard awards in the field (e.g. Barlow Prize, Guggenheim, Fulbright, Koussevitzky, Fromm, American Academy of Arts and Letters.) He likes machines with hiccups and spiders with missing legs, looks at Paul Klee’s Notebooks everyday, and tries to use the same set of ears to listen to Bach, Radiohead, or Ligeti.
Born in Aguascalientes, México, Luis Fernando Amaya is a composer and percussionist based in Oslo. Topics such as collective memory and the relationship between humans and non-humans (such as plants, animals, or environments) are commonly present in his work. He studied composition and music theory at the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Musicales (CIEM) and holds a Ph.D. in composition and music technology from Northwestern University.
Amaya’s music has been performed throughout the Americas and Europe by performers such as the CEPROMUSIC (México), Arditti Quartet (UK), Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (Switzerland), Ensemble Dal Niente, Fonema Consort, Yarn/Wire (USA), Quartetto Indaco (Italy) amongst others. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships such as the Fonca-Conacyt (National Fund for Culture and the Arts/National Commission for Science and Technology) Scholarship, Presidential Fellowship (NU), and representing México in the 61st International Rostrum of Composers of the UNESCO in Helsinki, Finland. As a performer, Amaya is a member of the collective composition and free improvisation trio Fat Pigeon.
His scores are published by BabelScores.
His monographic album Cortahojas was recently released by Protomaterial Records.