Hannah Lash: Portrait Concert at Miller Theatre

by Ted Gordon on April 5, 2016, 11:01 a.m.

The music of Hannah Lash is, as composer Martin Bresnick writes, infused with a "high seriousness"—a burning, disciplined seriousness, dedicated equally to the composition of new works and to the long musical tradition of the works' instruments, lineages, and intensities. An upcoming Portrait Concert at Columbia University's Miller Theatre features three works, two of which are world premieres. 

The program begins with the world premiere of Music for Eight Lungs, commissioned by the Miller Theatre and performed by loadbang. As the title would suggest, the performers in this ensemble—trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice—are rendered as breathing bodies, each lung equal to the next regardless of instrument. (The voice, too, is an instrument here, woven in to the fabric of the piece.) The phonemic material of this composition is drawn from Purcell's aria, "When I am Laid in Earth" (known as "Dido's Lament," 1688).

Six Etudes and a Dream follows, written for and performed by pianist Lisa Moore. Each etude is dedicated to an aspect of Moore's piano playing, which Lash praises for its "musical laser focus." Check out a video of Lisa Moore, joined by cellist Ashley Bathgate, performing the first movement of Lash's Friction, Pressure, Impact:

The program will end with Lash, also an accomplished harpist, joining the JACK Quartet to perform Filigree in Textile, a work she composed for JACK and harpist Yolanda Kondonassis in 2011. This work shows Lash's capacity to work in several compositional paradigms, all of which have formed an integral part in the fabric of her compositional tradition—a metaphor implied by the piece's title and movement titles, each named after a material used in the weft of medieval tapestries. "Gold" features an organic, unfolding melodic "cell" which transforms throughout the movement; "Silver" is "a formal and somber dance in rhythmic unison"; "Silk" is through-composed, with the harp emerging as a figure against the ground of the ensemble. Check out an excerpt below.

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!

Soper, Lash, and Pintscher Performances on the East Coast

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 16, 2015, 11:06 a.m.

Brooklyn's National Sawdust has already become one of the most vital venues for new music in New York, adding to an already-vibrant cultural scene on the East Coast. The New York Philharmonic has recognized this by holding their 2015 CONTACT! Series in this new venue, and on November 16th, they give a performance of Kate Soper's Into That World Inverted, for horn and piano.

Inspired by the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, Into That World Inverted imagines the inside of instruments, "where left is always right,/where the shadows are really the body,/where we stay awake all night,/where the heavens are shallow as the sea[...]". Check out a recording of it below. 

 This performance comes on the heels of the world premiere of Hannah Lash's Two Movements for Violin and Piano and the US Premiere of Matthias Pintscher's Profiles of Light triptych, both given brave and empassioned debut performances on November 13 by the Ensemble InterContemporain at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. A Washington Post review of the performance sums it up:

A work of almost prayer-like gentleness opened the program. Hannah Lash’s lovely, understated “Two Movements for Violin and Piano” (a commission by the Library’s McKim Fund, in its premiere) used the simplest of means — a cantabile violin line over a spare and open piano accompaniment — to create a sense of wistful reflection, then hesitation, before finding release in the soaring second movement.