Miller Theatre to Present Two World Premieres in Hannah Lash Composer Portrait

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts continues its Composer Portraits series with Hannah Lash, featuring JACK Quartet, loadbang, and pianist Lisa Moore, on Thursday, April 7, 2016 at 8 p.m. at the Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street). Tickets: $20-$30; Students with valid ID: $7-$18 at www.millertheatre.com/events/hannah-lash.

From Miller Theatre Executive Director Melissa Smey: "I've been watching Hannah Lash's career blossom for some time, and I'm so glad to present an evening of her work at Miller Theatre. Not only is she an accomplished composer, but she is also a skilled harpist, and she will be performing her work that evening. The concert also features a Miller commission for loadbang, and the world premiere of new piano etudes written for Lisa Moore. This evening of long-time collaborators is not to be missed."

The emotional intensity of Romanticism marries disciplined technique in the music of Hannah Lash. "There is a high seriousness to Hannah," says Martin Bresnick, her mentor at the Yale School of Music. "It's almost Puritan-it's a single and direct expression of one's soul. It's a very American type, and she burns with it." An accomplished harpist, Lash will play her own work alongside the JACK Quartet. The night also includes two world premieres, one of them a new piece for the chamber group loadbang, which has the unique lung-powered instrumentation of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice.

A cornerstone of Miller's programming, these "endlessly important" (The New York Times) and "indispensable" (The New Yorker) evening-length musical profiles explore the work of a single composer in depth, offering contemporary artists a space to explore, experiment, and make significant contributions to the field. Many composers participate in onstage discussions as part of their Portrait concert, offering the audience unique insight into their inspiration behind the notes. Zachary Woolfe writes in The New York Times: "Miller Theater's marquee series offers immersions into a single composer's work at a time. Melissa Smey, the theater's executive director, gives all-too-rare attention to female artists."

PROGRAM:
Music for Eight Lungs (2015) world premiere, Miller Theatre commission
Six Etudes and a Dream (2015) world premiere
Filigree in Textile (2011)

ARTISTS:
Hannah Lash, composer & harp
Lisa Moore, piano
JACK Quartet
Christopher Otto, violin
Ari Streisfeld, violin
John Pickford Richards, viola
Kevin McFarland, cello
loadbang
Jeffrey Gavett, baritone
Andy Kozar, trumpet
William Lang, trombone
Carlos Cordeirdo, bass clarinet

Hannah Lash (hannahlash.com) - Hailed by The New York Times as "striking and resourceful...handsomely brooding," Hannah Lash's music has been performed at the Times Center in Manhattan, the Chicago Art Institute, Tanglewood Music Center, Harvard University, The Chelsea Art Museum, and on the American Opera Project's stage in New York City. Commissions include The Fromm Foundation, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, American Composers Orchestra, The Naumburg Foundation, The Orpheus Duo, The Howard Hanson Foundation's Commissioning Fund, Case Western Reserve's University Circle Wind Ensemble, MAYA, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Arditti Quartet, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival and School.

Lash has received numerous honors and prizes, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a fellowship from Yaddo Artist Colony, the Naumburg Prize in Composition, the Barnard Rogers Prize in Composition, the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky Prize in Composition, and numerous academic awards. Her orchestral work, Furthermore, was selected by the American Composers Orchestra for the 2010 Underwood New Music Readings. Her chamber opera, Blood Rose, was presented by New York City Opera's VOX in the spring of 2011.

Recent premieres include Three Shades Without Angles, for flute, viola, and harp, by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players; Pulse-space, for string quartet, by the Flux Quartet; as well as several new orchestral works: Eating Flowers, for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music; Nymphs, for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra; and This Ease, for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. In October 2015, the American Composers Orchestra premiered Lash's Concerto for Harp and Chamber Orchestra, conducted by George Manahan and with Lash as soloist. Upcoming premieres include a new chamber opera, Beowulf, commissioned by Guerilla Opera, and a new work for loadbang, commissioned by Miller Theatre at Columbia University.

Lash obtained her Ph.D in Composition from Harvard University in 2010. She has held teaching positions at Harvard University (Teaching Fellow), at Alfred University (Guest Professor of Composition), and currently serves on the composition faculty at Yale University School of Music.

Lisa Moore - Described as "brilliant and searching...beautiful and impassioned...lustrous at the keyboard" by The New York Times, Lisa Moore's performances combine music and theatre with expressive and emotional power. Lisa Moore has released 8 solo discs, and over 30 collaborative discs.

This Australian virtuoso has performed with a large and diverse range of musicians and artists throughout the globe-from the London Sinfonietta to the John Jasperse Dance Company. A Steinway artist, Lisa has performed in some of the world's greatest concert halls-La Scala, the Musikverein, the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, and the Royal Albert Hall-to name just a few. Her guest appearances at festivals include the Holland, Lincoln Center, Schleswig-Holstein, BBC Proms, Uzbekistan, Musica Ficta Lithuania, Prague Spring, Istanbul, Athens, and the Darwin Festival.

Having won the silver medal in the 1981 Rockefeller-Carnegie Hall International American Music Competition, Lisa Moore moved to New York in 1985 to begin freelancing. From 1992-2008 she was the founding pianist for the Bang on a Can All-Stars. She has also collaborated with hundreds of composers, including John Adams, Martin Bresnick, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Iannis Xenakis. As an artistic curator Moore produced Australia's Canberra International Music Festival 2008 Sounds Alive series, importing artists from around the world for 10 days of events at the Street Theatre.

JACK Quartet - Deemed "superheroes of the new music world" (Boston Globe), the JACK Quartet is "the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity and a take-no-prisoners sense of commitment" (Washington Post). The recipient of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, New Music USA's Trailblazer Award, and the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, JACK has performed to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall (USA), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ (Netherlands), IRCAM (France), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Suntory Hall (Japan), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Festival Internacional Cervatino (Mexico), and Teatro Colón (Argentina).

Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, JACK is focused on new work, leading them to collaborate with composers John Luther Adams, Chaya Czernowin, Simon Steen-Andersen, Caroline Shaw, Helmut Lachenmann, Steve Reich, Matthias Pintscher, and John Zorn. Upcoming and recent premieres include works by Derek Bermel, Cenk Ergün, Roger Reynolds, Toby Twining, and Georg Friedrich Haas.

The members of the quartet met while attending the Eastman School of Music and studied closely with the Arditti Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Muir String Quartet, and members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain under the direction of Pierre Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy.

loadbang - New York City-based new music chamber group loadbang is building a new kind of music for mixed ensemble. Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as "cultivated" by The New Yorker, "an extra-cool new music group" and "exhilarating" by The Baltimore Sun, "inventive" by The New York Times and called a "formidable new-music force" by Time Out New York. Their unusual lung-powered instrumentation (trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet and baritone voice) has provoked diverse responses from composers, resulting in a stylistic palette ranging from whistled Brazilian rhythms and microtonal jazz standards to the decoupled and deconstructed sounds of the second modernity. Symphony Space, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, Da Camera of Houston, Rothko Chapel, MATA, the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University, and the Avant Music Festival are some of their recent presenters. They are recipients of the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.

loadbang has premiered more than 200 works by leading composers including Pulitzer Prize winners Charles Wuorinen and David Lang, Guggenheim Fellowship winner Alex Mincek, Eve Beglarian, Nick Didkovsky, Reiko Füting, Andy Akiho, and Alexandre Lunsqui, who were both recently commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, and the individual members of the ensemble. loadbang can also be heard on a 2012 release of the music by John Cage on Avant Media Records, a 2013 release of the music of loadbang member Andy Kozar titled On the end... on ANALOG Arts Records which was called 'virtuosic' by The New Yorker, a 2014 release on ANALOG Arts Records titled Monodramas, and a 2015 release on New Focus Recordings titled Lungpowered.