Hannah Lash on composing orchestral piece ‘Eating Flowers’ for Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music
Hannah Lash started composing music at the age of 4, and in less than 30 years she has hit full stride. Lash will complete several dozen commissioned works during this year, perform her own harp concerto at Carnegie Hall, and bring the world premiere of her orchestral piece Eating Flowers to next month’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Currently on the Music Composition faculty at Yale University, Lash’s expanding output is filled with magic, rigor and invention for voice, solo instrument, chamber orchestra and opera. Lash was chosen by celebrated composer John Adams to create this year’s commission for Marin Alsop and the Cabrillo Festival orchestra.
“John is one of my biggest heroes,” Lash says. “I so admire how brave he is, and the commission was very meaningful for me.” The invitation came last autumn, at which time Lash says she “started from scratch” to create the short composition for full orchestra.
“I usually begin by sitting down and being very quiet for a long while,” Lash says. “I know it sounds a bit mystical, but I let the ideas come to me. A tasty seed has to be there—tasty enough to grow more things. Once it’s there, I begin.”
In this case, Lash began with a rhythmic pitched-percussion pattern. “I decided to work with it, it was definitely a strong thread,” she says. The creation of Eating Flowers, says Lash, both did and did not come easily. “I was inspired for sure, but I also worked very hard at it,” she says. “Writing for a full orchestra, with triple winds and full complement of percussion was a huge and wonderful challenge. My job was to make full use of the orchestra, without overwhelming the initial inspiration.”
Lash describes the style she invokes as resonant timbres. “I amplify colors to a large extent—the color palette of the sound, but also the harmonic palette,” Lash says. “All my compositions have a common DNA that’s fairly recognizable.” That palette has been called “striking” and “introspective” by the attentive media.
“I love full orchestras and I find myself attracted to that much possibility of sound and complexity,” Lash says. “To a certain extent I find my greatest strength lies in orchestral music.” Having said that, Lash confesses that she has three operas in the works right now. “I’m fortunate. I fall in love with each different project. Each one I’m working on becomes my favorite,” she says. But of all the instruments, the harp—her primary instrument—is high on her list. As if the professor and mother of a 3-year-old weren’t already balancing many full plates, Lash admits to practicing the harp “five to six hours a day,” in preparation for performing her own harp concerto this October at Carnegie Hall.
Music was always her calling. “For a little while modern dance was a serious contender, but I eventually felt that I wouldn’t have served music fully that way,” says Lash.
Famed for polyphonic compositions that engage in dialogue with the masterworks of Josquin de Prez, Lash has built exquisite tonal structures “preserving 16th century rules, but with a tiny bit more chromatics.” Renaissance composers make work Lash calls “ravishingly beautiful. Even though there are rules to this sort of structure, for me the rules aren’t so rigid, as they are the way a living organism grows.”
“I do try for beauty,” Lash admits. “I wouldn’t want to write music if it weren’t beautiful.” Lash has favorite composers, such as Mozart, Haydn, the Baroque—“I can never get enough Bach”—and moving forward in time, “Schubert, Schumann, Mahler—Bartók is huge for me,” she says. Influences upon her work include the avant garde legend György Ligeti, and living composers Aaron Kernis and John Adams, as well as her mentor in composition studies, Martin Breznik.
“Yes,” says Lash, happily. “I am full up on commissions—it’s really an adrenaline rush.” Lash agrees that composers of new music have to work to win audiences. “You have to woo people a bit, convince them you’re not trying to alarm them. If you have a commission you feel a bit more loved. I have a definite OCD streak,” she says with a laugh. “I finished the Cabrillo commission way in advance.” On Aug. 15 we’ll get to hear the results.
The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music runs Aug. 2-16. Hannah Lash’s ‘Eating Flowers’ premieres at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 15. For full schedule and tickets, visit cabrillomusic.org. PHOTO: Yale music professor, harpist and composer Hannah Lash says she amplifies the harmonic and color palettes of sound in her composition ‘Eating Flowers,’ which premieres on Aug. 15 at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. BOB HANDELMAN
