FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 2, 2019
SEATTLE MODERN ORCHESTRA’S 10TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT
SEATTLE, WA – Seattle Modern Orchestra’s co-artistic directors, Jérémy Jolley and Julia Tai, are thrilled to announce its 10th Anniversary season, an ambitious celebration of SMO’s well-earned reputation. The season will feature ten concerts in ten venues, cross-genre collaborations, and the world-class premieres and performances the city has come to expect from this intrepid ensemble.
“We’re so excited to celebrate our 10th Anniversary! We’re making it a really special year by collaborating with several partners in the city – Earshot Jazz Festival and National Nordic Museum, as well as mounting our first chamber opera – Ipsa dixit by Kate Soper at Base: Experimental Arts + Space. We have concerts all over the city – Folio Library, Chapel Performance Space, Foster/White Gallery, Fremont Abbey, and the Royal Room. The culminating highlight of the season will be our 10th Anniversary concert at the newly renovated Town Hall, bringing back our first Seattle Premiere, Tehillim by Steve Reich, and past SMO commissions by Kate Soper and Tom Baker. We will also present the world premiere of our first Koussevitzky Music Foundation commission – Huck Hodge’s New work for solo percussion and ensemble. It’ll be a monumental season for us!” – Co-Artistic Director, Julia Tai.
Concert 1: Earshot Jazz Festival
Oct. 15, 2019 | 7:30 pm | Town Hall Forum
Earshot Jazz presents an exceptional meeting of local jazz and classical artists exploring the freedom and complexity of the two genres. This all-star collaboration includes Darius Jones, and Wayne Horvitz leading SMO musicians in the premiere of his new work, Vagabond. Expand your ears and mind with innovators who merge chamber music with improvisation, scored and experimental jazz, and open form composition.
Anthony Braxton: Composition No. 56
Earle Brown: Oh, K
Wayne Horvitz: Vagabond: Constructions for Chamber Orchestra and Improvisers [commission/World Premiere]
Darius Jones: LawNOrder
George Lewis: Artificial Life
Concert 2: Norwegian Odyssé
Nov. 3, 2019 | 1:30 pm | National Nordic Museum
Step into the mystic sounds of Norway with a chamber music collaboration between SMO and the Bergen-based Valen Trio. Through five U.S. premieres, explore how talented Norwegian composers across generations are continuing and reinterpreting the rich history of Nordic culture through sound.
Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi: Barnet som blev osynligt (The child who became invisible) for soprano, percussion and electronics [US Premiere]
Anders Torgunrud Røshol: Livorno Fragments [US Premiere]
Lasse Thoresen: Hagen (The Garden) [US Premiere]
Knut Vaage:Odyssé for sinfonietta [US Premiere]
Knut Vaage: Svev for piano trio [US Premiere]
Concert 3: Inside Out
Jan. 24, 2020 | 7:30 pm | Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum Library
Art can turn our viewpoints inside out, bringing to light deep human experiences, and urging us to reexamine our reality. Opera becomes chamber music, revealing both beauty and tragedy in miniature; finite geometry inspires wild virtuosity; and captivity and grief bring transcendence. Join SMO for this intimate journey set in one of Seattle’s most cherished cultural and civic gathering places.
Thomas Adès: Court Studies from “The Tempest”
Anthony Cheung: Elective Memory
Ivan Fedele: Arcipelago Möbius
Tristan Murail: Stalag VIIIA
Alfred Schnittke: Hymn No. 2
Concert 4: Sequenza Marathon
Feb. 15, 2020 | 8:00 pm | Chapel Performance Space
Luciano Berio’s fourteen Sequenzas span more than forty years, an essential catalogue of twentieth-century performance. Each work is an astonishing exploration of the experimental potential of modern instruments and places Olympian demands on the performer. In this marathon of ten Sequenzas, witness incredible feats of musical athleticism that push the boundaries of virtuosity and possibility.
Luciano Berio
Sequenza I for flute (1958, rev. 1992) | Sarah Pyle, flute
Sequenza II for harp (1963) | Sophie Baird-Daniel, harp
Sequenza III for voice (1965) | Maria Männistö, soprano
Sequenza IV for piano (1965) | Cristina Valdés, piano
Sequenza VIII for violin (1976) | Michael Lim, violin
Sequenza IX for clarinet (1980) | Angelique Poteat, clarinet
Sequenza XIV for cello (2002) | Ha-Yang Kim, cello
Concert 5: Celebrating 10 Years of SMO
Mar. 27, 2020 | 8:00 pm | Town Hall
Join SMO in a joyful celebration of its tenth anniversary in the newly-renovated Town Hall. The ensemble revisits some of its most memorable performances, local collaborators, celebrated composers, and Seattle “firsts.” The program includes SMO’s first commission (Baker), an environmental piece for ensemble and tape (Cage), the ensemble’s nationally noted vocal collaboration/arrangement (Soper), a revival of Steve Reich’s seminal work, Tehillim (premiered in Seattle by SMO), and a world premiere by Huck Hodge featuring SMO’s tour-de-force percussionist, Bonnie Whiting.
John Cage: Etcetera
Tom Baker: Shendos No. 12
Huck Hodge: New work for solo percussion and ensemble
Kate Soper: Now Is Forever for soprano and chamber orchestra
Steve Reich: Tehillim
Concert 6: The Stories We Tell
Apr. 26, 2020 | 7:30 pm | Foster/White Gallery
Rich traditions of storytelling span across cultures and time, transporting us through fantastical fairy tales or taking us into the truth of lived experience. With a backdrop of dramatic contemporary art, SMO ventures through mythology and folklore, contrasted with more Earthly tales, including a commission by local composer/cellist Ha-Yang Kim.
Marcos Balter: delete/control/option for alto flute and cello
Ha-Yang Kim: New work for flute, cello, harp [commission/World Premiere]
Murray Schafer: The Crown of Ariadne, suite for solo harp, percussion, and tape
Freya Waley-Cohen: Skye for solo harp
Concert 7: Parts of the Whole
May 14, 2020 | 8:00 pm | Fremont Abbey Arts Center
A showcase of young compositional voices, SMO explores the artistic process of rearranging, reversing, or combining parts of a whole idea. Through experimental textures, fragment combinations, and live performance choices, composers take us through the complexities of dreams, human relationships, and time, including a commission/world premiere by Seattle composer Jérémy Jolley.
Anahita Abbasi: Faab IV / a femme fatale
Chen-Hui Jen: Across & Between II
Marisol Jiménez: Bestiario Onírico III – Ciudadela [US Premiere]
Jérémy Jolley: (contro-)clessidra I, II, III, IV (2020) [commission/World Premiere]
Fausto Romitelli: Professor Bad Trip – Lesson I
Concert 8: Ipsa Dixit
Jun. 5 & 6, 2020 | 8:00 pm | Base: Experimental Arts + Space
A “twenty-first-century masterpiece” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit is a semi-staged, evening-length chamber music theatre work for voice, flute, violin, and percussion exploring the intersections of language and music, emotion and meaning, expressivity and truth. SMO welcomes notable local director Bobbin Ramsey in her operatic directorial debut, to help bring to life a staged performance of this moving work for Seattle audiences.
Kate Soper: Ipsa Dixit
Bobbin Ramsey: Director
Concert 9: Digital Humanity
Jun. 14, 2020 | 7:00 pm | The Royal Room
The complicated political and social environment of today inspires three provocative works by young composers. Wang Lu and Seattle-based Kaley Lane Eaton delve into our deeply problematic relationship with the digital realm. Turkish composer and Seattle resident Yigit Kolat brings us back to reality to face the very real humanitarian crisis of immigration.
Kaley Lane Eaton: New work [commission/World Premiere]
Yigit Kolat: Tierra Arrasada (Scorched Earth) [commission/World Premiere]
Wang Lu: Cloud Intimacy
Concert 10: Secret Free Show!
Coming July 2020
Programs and scheduling are subject to change.
PURCHASE TICKETS:
Online: https://www.seattlemodernorchestra.org/concerts/
About SEATTLE MODERN ORCHESTRA
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 radio talks, lectures, and other forms of outreach in an accessible and inviting format all designed to expand the listener’s appreciation and awareness of the music of today.
Press Contact:
Clarisse Benson, Communications & Operations Manager, clarisse.benson@seattlemodernorchestra.org
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Seattle Modern Orchestra is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike.
Shunpike
815 Seattle Boulevard S, Suite 215
Seattle, WA 98134
About Shunpike:
Shunpike is the 501(c)(3) non-profit agency that provides independent arts groups in Washington State with the services, resources, and opportunities they need to forge their own paths to sustainable success.