Hannah Lash: Composer/Harpist

by Ted Gordon on Dec. 3, 2015, 10:45 a.m.

The composer at the writing desk: from Beethoven to this day, this is the enduring image of the scene of musical composition. But what about the composer at her instrument? Many of today's (and yesterday's) most vibrant composers also enjoy careers as instrumentalists: Timo Andres, Kate Soper, Alex Mincek, Ted Hearne, Vijay Iyer and many other PSNY composers inherit the composer-performer tradition by performing their own works and those of others. 

Hannah Lash is no exception to this rule. After premiering her own Concerto for Harp and Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in October, Lash has recently signed with Ariel Artists, joining the ranks of exciting musicians such as violinist Rachel Lee Priday, the Tesla Quartet, and the Mobius Trio. Check out Lash's own performance of her recent concerto (arranged for chamber ensemble) at Yale, where she is a full-time composition faculty member of the School of Music:  

Lash's upcoming performance schedule includes concerts at Yale, Spectrum, Miller Theatre and The Greene Space for the New York Philharmonic's Biennial. Be sure to catch her in 2016!

Ted Hearne's "Law of Mosaics" in Chicago; "The Source" CD Release

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 23, 2015, 9:59 a.m.

Ted Hearne is not a composer to shy away from the real world. From his now-canonical Katrina Ballads, which sets texts related to the 2006 Hurricane of the same name, to his modern-day oratorio project The Source, which sets texts surrounding Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks, Hearne's music draws from the complexities of politics and recreates similar tensions and complexities within his music.

Hearne's 30-minute work for string orchestra, Law of Mosaics, is no exception to this rule. Hearne borrows the title from a passage in David Shields' Reality Hunger: "The law of mosaics: how to deal with parts in the absence of wholes." Commissioned in 2013 by A Far Cry, and released on CD alongside Andrew Norman's The Companion Guide to Rome in 2014, Law of Mosaics can be read as an essay in five parts. Picking up on Shield's metaphor of weaving a fabric between digital and analog media and culture, Hearne crafts a loosely-knit pattern of musical references and inspirations; if these form the weft of his weaving, then his own compositional voice constitutes its warp. In the end, the "patterns" woven together by Hearne resemble less a tightly-knit pastiche than performative absence of seamlessness, a reminder of the gaps and voids that constitute our everyday lives. 

Law of Mosaics will be performed as a part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW series, co-curated by Elizabeth Ogonek and Samuel Adams, on November 23rd at Chicago's Harris Theater. 

Hearne's critically-acclaimed project The Source, which premiered at the 2014 Next Wave Festival at BAM, is also newly available as an audio recording on New Amsterdam Records. Writing in Pitchfork, Seth Colter Walls calls it "some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory—from any genre." Check out a video excerpt of its premiere at BAM below. 

"The Branch Will Not Break" at Present Music

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 20, 2015, 10:43 a.m.

"Upshore from the cloud— / The slow whale of country twilight— / The spume of light falls into valleys / Full of roses." Thus begins James Wright's "By A Lake in Minnesota" from his 1963 book of poetry, The Branch Will Not Break. Wright's evocation of a solitary existence in the wonders of the natural permeates the book, which Christopher Cerrone has used as inspiration for his new work, The Branch Will Not Break, for vocal ensemble and ten instruments, which will premiere at Present Music's annual Thanksgiving concert.

Wright writes about the Upper Midwest as a home tinged with sadness. Speaking to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Thanksgiving, Cerrone says "It's a complicated holiday [...] You want to return to the place you're from. It's a time to reflect and it can be sort of melancholy." Returning to the cold Midwest from his tenure at the American Academy in Rome, Cerrone will be present at the November 22 premiere of his new work, and will also give a pre-concert talk (sponsored by Milwaukee's own Colectivo Coffee about the poetic world of this piece. 

Cerrone's works that set poetry are numerous and powerful; his settings of Tao Lin can be heard in I Will Learn To Love A Person, of Bill Knott in The Naomi Songs, and of Ryōkan in Not One Word. Check out some recordings below to get a feeling of Cerrone's poetic settings: