Seattle Modern Orchestra: This is Beethoven – Farrin, Wang, & Kagel (on-demand until 12/19/2020)

Suzanne Farrin –  uscirmi di braccia (leave my arms) for viola and percussion
Wang Lu – New work TBA (world premiere)

Our second concert will be a part of a city-wide Beethoven Festival, curated by Emerald City Music, in celebrating the 250th birthday of this iconic classical composer. Seattle Modern Orchestra will present music as revolutionary, critical, and responsive in our time–as Beethoven was in his time. The program includes Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van (1970), a tribute to Beethoven on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth. The indeterminate “meta-collage” of Beethoven’s music challenges the performers not only in their technical virtuosity but also their ability to recreate music as composers themselves. The concert will also feature a new work by Chinese composer and pianist, Wang Lu. Wang, Professor of Music at Brown University, has received many awards including Berlin Prize in Music Composition, 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation and the Fromm Foundation. This new work will explore Wang’s personal relationship with the music of Beethoven, and is a response to its ideals using her own aesthetic and musical language. The concert will open with American composer Suzanne Farrin who disrupts the romantic idealization of Petrach’s sonnet on Apollo and Daphne in her work for viola and percussion, uscirmi di braccia (leave my arms).

The broadcast will take place at 7:30pm Pacific.

Online ticket purchase will be available soon. Ticket receipt will include the link and passcode to the Crowdcast Digital Stage for this performance.

Link to donate: http://www.seattlemodernorchestra.org/support/

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.