March 22-24, 2007

The Imagine 2007 Festival of new music at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music will feature the works of Armando Luna and Hasan Ucarusu. Armando Luna is an accomplished composer from Mexico City whose works are both challenging and exciting. We will perform two of his chamber concertos for mixed ensembles of eight to ten players. Hasan Ucarusu, an accomplished composer from Turkey, will be a visiting faculty member in composition for the entire spring semester, 2007.

Armando Luna studied with Mario Lavista, a well established Mexican composer who studied with Ligeti. Luna’s style is not derived from Mexican folk or pop idioms, but is well rooted in the contemporary classic composers. His works have been performed all over the world, but most recently by Present Music in Milwaukee.

Luna is Mexican by birth and by his choice of where he makes his living. Like many composers in the U.S., he cobbles together a livelihood be teaching and by winning occasional grants. Musically, he belongs as much to the world as to Mexico.

“I’m almost as Hungarian as Mexican, since I’m influenced a lot by Bartók,” he joked. “So much Mexican music is popular music – symphonic, but with the sound of mariachi or Indian rhythms. We can be Mexican composers without that.”

Hasan Ucarusu studied composition with Ahmed Adnan Saygun and Cengiz Tanc at the Mimar Sinan University State Conservatory of Istanbul, where he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in composition in 1990 and 1992, respectively. He completed his doctorate in composition in 1997 at the University of Pennsylvania, under the direction of George Crumb and Richard Wernick.

His works have been performed (and broadcast) by all the leading orchestras in Turkey, including the Bilkent Symphony, the Presidential Symphony Orchestra (Ankara), and the Istanbul and Izmir State Symphony Orchestras, as well as abroad by such ensembles as the Moldavian Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, New Music Ensemble (Boston), Ensemble Mosaik-Berlin, Antifonia Chorus (Romania), New Music Ensemble of Thessaloniki, Ensemble Silk Road (USA), ART Woodwind Quintet (Skopje), 10:10 Ensemble of Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Seattle Chamber Players.

Visiting Students
As an added attraction, we have invited each of our guest composers to bring talented student composers with them so that we may perform one of their works as well.  Their works will be scheduled with student works from the Scheidt School of Music in a performance by the Contemporary Chamber Players.