Waves

“aesthetics capture a sense of tradition and innovation…” (The New York Times). His music is permeated by classical, jazz, and electronic music traditions, all underpinned with a love and respect for the great outdoors. His works have been performed by the St. Louis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, the Rochester and Calgary Philharmonic Orchestras, Collegium Cincinnati, and Calidore String Quartet, among others.  Patrick was recently chosen as the inaugural composer in residence with the Lansing  Symphony Orchestra (2019-2022).

Patrick’s interdisciplinary research in soundscape ecology—a field that aims to better understand ecosystems through sound—has taken him to imperiled regions around the world, including the Amazon rainforest and the Book Cliffs of Utah. His baseline recordings for ecological impact studies are also the fodder for artistic inspiration. These pieces draw parallels between the sounds of the natural world and those of the concert hall, seeking to bring awareness to the importance of sound in our environment. 

Patrick’s work in this field has been supported by a Graham Sustainability Institute Doctoral Fellowship, Theodore Presser Award, and a University of Michigan Predoctoral Fellowship, resulting in an ongoing body of works called The Wilderness Anthology. 

Recent CD releases include American Rapture by the Rochester Philharmonic, Wind Cave on GVSU’s Dawn Chorus Album, My Time is Now featuring #tbt and the premiere recording using George Gershwin’s Steinway piano, and River of Doubt with the Atlantic Classical Orchestra.   

Patrick holds a B.Mus from Western Washington University, and an M.M. and D.M.A. from the University of Michigan.  He has studied with Alexei Girsh, Roger Briggs, Evan Chambers, Bright Sheng, and Michael Daugherty.  He  was raised in Seattle, Washington, and is currently an adjunct faculty member at the University of Michigan. 

When we put something online especially on social media, it enters an echo chamber of sorts. The seemingly mundane can gain outsized importance; the dense, content laden, or sublime can be cast aside. Digital is propelled by these extremes, casting aside some musical ideas and elevating others through a musical echo chamber.

-Patrick Harlin

Anna Thorvaldsdottir (b. 1977) is an Icelandic composer whose “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (NY Times) and “striking” (Guardian) sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material, and tends to evoke “a sense of place and personality” (NY Times) through a distinctive “combination of power and intimacy” (Gramophone). “Never less than fascinating”, according to Gramophone Magazine, it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow. Anna’s works have been nominated and awarded on many occasions - most notably, her “confident and distinctive handling of the orchestra” (Gramophone) has garnered her the prestigious Nordic Council Music Prize, the New York Philharmonic’s Kravis Emerging Composer Award, and Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award and Martin E. Segal Award.

Anna’s music is widely performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations - such as the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and Carnegie Hall. Among the many other orchestras and ensembles that have performed her music include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Crossing, the Bavarian Radio Choir, Münchener Kammerorchester, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, Avanti Chamber Ensemble, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, CAPUT Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, Oslo Philharmonic, and Either/Or Ensemble. In April 2018, Esa-Pekka Salonen led the New York Philharmonic in the premiere of Anna’s work METACOSMOS. The work received its European premiere with the Berlin Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert in January 2019, and its UK premiere at the BBC Proms 2019, conducted by Edward Gardner. Anna’s symphony-scale AION was premiered by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in May 2019, conducted by Anna-Maria Helsing. Her new orchestral work CATAMORPHOSIS was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko in January 2021.

Portrait concerts with Anna’s music have been featured at several major venues and music festivals, including Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival in NYC, the Composer Portraits Series at NYC’s Miller Theatre, the Leading International Composers series at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, London’s Spitalfields Music Festival, Münchener Kammerorchester’s Nachtmusic der Moderne series, and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra’s Point Festival. Other venues include the BBC Proms, ISCM World Music Days, Nordic Music Days, Ultima Festival, Lucerne Summer Festival, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Tectonics, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Helsinki’s Musica Nova Festival, and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. 

Anna is currently based in the London area. She regularly teaches and gives presentations on composition, in academic settings, as part of residencies, and in private lessons. Invited lectures and presentations include Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, Northwestern, Sibelius Academy, and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Anna is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Anna holds a PhD (2011) from the University of California in San Diego.

My music is written as an ecosystem of materials that are carried from one performer- or performers- to the next throughout the process of the work. As you play a phrase, harmony, texture or a lyrical line it is being delivered to you, passed on from another performer- performers- for you to carry on until it is delivered to another. All materials continuously grow in and out of each other, growing and transforming throughout the process. 

When you see a long sustained pitch, think of it as fragile flower that you need to carry in your hands and walk the distance on a thin rope without dropping it or falling. It is a way of measuring time and noticing the tiny changes that happen as you walk further along the same thin rope. Absolute tranquility with the necessary amount of concentration and determination needed to perform the task. 

I have a tendency to write music in rather low dynamics. The lower levels of dynamics (in the p area) indicate my wish for an approach to pitches and sound materials with a sense of ease and carefulness rather than merely indicating an audio level. I do not intend for the harmonies to be too quiet but rather projecting a sense of serenity, with determination, and with full presence and depth of the pitches. I would kindly ask that the dynamics be subtly over-emphasized, as appropriate in the progression of the music, and that pitches are carried with a strong sense of depth and projection, even at the dynamic level of p. 

-Anna

is a Black transdisciplinary artist. They are most interested in practices aligned with relational aesthetics & the everyday; fragments & collage; and anti-oppressive, liberatory politics.

Yaz performs as a violinist, vocalist & steel-pannist in a wide variety of settings including DIY/indie venues, contemporary chamber music, and steel bands. Their work is presented in many different mediums & collaborative projects, and often reckons with specific influences ranging from politics of identity & liberation to natural phenomena and poetics. Most recently, they have been developing the pop/post-genre duo laydøwn with Canadian guitarist-producer Andrew Noseworthy. Yaz has had the privilege & opportunity to build community in the US, Canada, Europe & Trinidad and Tobago—they have created with artists like Andy Akiho, Contact (with Evan Ziporyn), Contemporaneous, George Lewis, JACK Quartet, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Miss Grit, Rohan Chander, Skiffle Steel Orchestra, and Wadada Leo Smith. Their record of commissioned music for violin/voice & electronics AmethYst is forthcoming on people | places | records in 2021.

Yaz holds degrees in violin performance & poetry from New York University where they studied with Cyrus Beroukhim, Robert Honstein & Terrance Hayes (among others). They are the visual arts editor at Peach Mag & a contributing writer at ICIYL. Yaz loves chess, horror movies, & bubble tea.

for violin, cello & marimba, 7min

1. It is ice that is an intermediate stage between snow and glacial ice.

2. The theory postulates that even though the individual cannot recall the memory, it may still be affecting them subconsciously, and that these memories can emerge later into the consciousness.

is the  recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award.  Heralded as “music with a distinctive voice” by the New York Times and as “lyrical, colorful, firmly rooted in tradition, but absolutely new” by the Washington Post, his music has been performed at major venues worldwide by acclaimed artists and orchestras, including Anne-Sophie Mutter, the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and the Kronos Quartet.

His music has been enthusiastically embraced by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, for whom he wrote Time Machines, which she premiered with the New York Philharmonic in June 2011 and subsequently performed with various orchestras in the United States, Europe, and Asia.  He also wrote Aftersong for her,  which she performed extensively in the US and Europe, including Carnegie Hall in New York, the Barbican in London, and the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg.  A critic from the London Times said, “if all his pieces are as emotionally charged and ingenious in their use of rethought tonality as this, give me more.” 

He has also had an extended association with members of the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as the orchestra itself.  In 2009  his harp concerto Traces, which was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic was premiered by harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet under the baton of Donald Runnicles. He has written numerous pieces for Langlamet, which she has premiered at the Philharmonie, often with members of the Berlin Philharmonic.  He recently wrote Spark for the 12 cellos of the Berlin Philharmonic, which they premiered in Rotterdam.  

His orchestra piece, Divisions, was recently premiered by the Seattle Symphony, conducted by Ludovic Morlot,  and will be performed by the Boston Symphony both in Boston and New York, conducted by Andris Nelsons. His Microsymph, referred to by the composer as a large-scale symphony that has been squeezed into only ten minutes, was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra and premiered at Carnegie Hall. It has also been performed by such orchestras as the San Francisco Symphony, the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the BBC Wales Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra, and has been recorded by the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra with Hugh Wolff, conductor.

He has also written works that involve electronic media and video. Nightmaze, a multimedia piece based on a text of Thomas Bolt in which the protagonist dreams he is rushing along a dark, enormous highway, where strange road signs loom up only to disappear into the night, has been performed by Network for New Music and the Mosaic Ensemble. The Philadelphia Inquirer said “every turn is breathtaking” and the New York Times, “Currier’s rich and imaginative music sets the right tone, with its fractured and dissonant baroque-like gestures leading off like highway exits into the void and hinting at distant reservoirs of emotion and yearning.” 

Recordings include his Time Machines, recorded by Anne-Sophie Mutter and the New York Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon,  Next Atlantis with the Ying Quartet on Naxos, and “On the Verge” from Music from Copland House, featuring his Grawemeyer Award-winning Static, and other chamber works. His “Quartetset/Quiet Time” album, recorded by the Cassatt Quartet, says Anne Midgette for The New York Times, “…distances the present from the past, causing the listener to think about music itself.” 

He has received many prestigious awards including the Berlin Prize, Rome Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has held residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies. He received a DMA from the Juilliard School and from 1999-2007 taught at Columbia University.  He is currently Artist in Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey.

Sebastian Currier is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

On a single day in New York City, we briefly enter into the thoughts of various women and girls, from a young child to an eighty year old woman. They are obviously all different from one another, yet they share things in common. Each will presumably move - or already has moved - from childhood, to adulthood, to old age. Each also engages with the world energetically and all share a healthy sense of independence and self-determination. Imagine, then, that these girls and women actually represent just one woman’s conscious life, not unfolding over decades, but coexisting within a single day. In their combined thoughts, a woman’s entire life is represented. Waves, for soprano, chamber ensemble, video and electronics, is based on Virginia Woolf’s late novel, The Waves. It is a series of ten songs, which use brief excerpts from Woolf’s text, spanning the lifetime of a single character. In short video clips we see the external lives of a number of girls and women, while we hear the thoughts of Woolf’s character sung by the soprano. Interspersed between these brief moments of life are images of Stuyvesant Cove, on the East River in Manhattan, from dawn to night.