World Premiere, 7.17.25
Jennifer Gersten, violin
Hannah A. Barnes, electronics
Scholes Street Studio, Brooklyn

“Caminante, no hay caminos, hay que caminar.”
—anonymous inscription on a Spanish monastery
“In my beginning is my end.... In my end is my beginning. —T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”
The paths one takes are rarely, if ever, clear and straightforward. clouded winding paths reflects upon the above mantra, which has guided me for several years, as well upon as the circumstances surrounding the composition of the piece and the physical recovery of both myself (before the composition) and my collaborator, Jennifer Gersten. After an injury necessitated a drastic change in how Jennifer played the violin (taking up an improvisation practice with the violin on her lap), creating uncertainty around performance possibilities, I was eager to continue this collaborative project, finding a connection between her situation and my own years of chronic scoliosis-related back pain as a young woman.
Before intensive physical therapy, which led to significant and lasting positive change, I had to adapt and limit certain activities for years as a teenager and young adult. In clouded winding paths, I took an adaptive approach to violin writing, which led to certain discoveries in our collaboration that I would not have found otherwise—wispy harmonic sounds that come from inserting a knitting needle between the strings; or different approaches to overpressure or molto sul tasto bowing that are only possible with the violin positioned horizontally; and so on. As Jennifer was able to return to playing in the “traditional” position, in the finished piece, these adaptive materials are present in the electronics, which augment or contrast with what takes place in the live violin. This adaptive playing also influenced materials and development in the “traditional” position, which is modulated by the filtering and delays within the live electronics.
At the heart of the piece is a complex network of material and textural relationships, which includes polyphony between the solo violin and its fixed electronic counterpart. Materials and structures that are created and used in rigorous manners (including a thirteen-note microtonal tone row) come into contact with messy, unpredictable materials and processes. While some of these paths were determined at the outset, many were illuminated along the compositional process and could not have been anticipated at the origin of the journey.
clouded winding paths, which pays homage to Luigi Nono, was composed for and is dedicated to Jennifer Gersten. It is a cousin to my piece for electric guitar, Negative Capability (2020).
— HAB

Poster/thumbnail design by Jennifer Gersten.
All fixed media recordings by Jennifer Gersten.

clouded winding paths (2025, world premiere)

TINY NOCTURNE

Jorge Amado (b. 1997)
Ajiaco y símbolos (2024) (world premiere) 

Premiered by Ensemble 20+ and conductor Michael Lewanski.
DePaul School of Music, Gannon Hall, October 7, 2024.

Ajiaco y símbolos is a two-movement piece reflecting the culmination of my composition studies in Havana and Chicago. Both movements can be performed independently. Dedicated to Michael Lewanski and DePaul’s Ensemble 20+, it also honors my teachers in Havana and Chicago, respectively.

The first movement, Ajiaco, draws inspiration from anthropologist Fernando Ortiz’s 1939 metaphor describing Cuban culture as a grand ajiaco, highlighting its diverse ethnic roots. This movement begins with a brief dialogue between flute and the percussion section, where the latter’s improvisational rhythms evoke the primal energy of Cuba’s indigenous roots. This opening gives way to a vibrant tapestry of Cuban genres, including Zapateo, Rumba, Filin, and others, blending Hispanic, African, and American influences.

The second movement, Símbolos, explores Cuban culture through a social lens, using symbols to represent three critical struggles: restricted speech, limited resources, and emigration. This movement incorporates extended techniques and extra-musical elements to challenge the audience’s perception.

PERFORMERS:
Xander Day, flute
Jay Savoy, clarinet
Nickoli Kumm, saxophone
Maria Victoria Merlo, trumpet
Ryan Saladin, trombone
Wonee Kim, piano
Emma Mitchell, percussion I
Brendan Rich, percussion II
Benjamin Mora, violin
Casey Lebkicker, viola
Aurian Kutner, cello
Anthony D'Agostino, bass

Jorge Amado：Ajiaco y símbolos ｜ DePaul Ensemble 20+

World premiere: August 23, 2025
Location: St. Martin’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Maryland, United States of America

Vitrales (Stained glass in English), is inspired by the beauty and complexity of the stained
glass windows that adorn many Cuban buildings, especially in churches and museums,
where colors and shapes combine to create unique works of art. Although it's a single
movement, the piece is divided into multiple parts, reflecting the structure and aesthetics of
these stained glass windows. The music draws heavily from traditional Cuban genres, such as
Son, Rumba, and rhythms and melodies inspired by Santería, and while utilizing a modern
musical language, it presents a great diversity of styles.

PERFORMERS:
Leo Sussman, flute
Lillian Copeland, oboe
Graeme Steele Johnson, clarinet
Remy Taghavi, bassoon
Wilden Dannenberg, horn
Emma Richman, violin
Jennifer Ahn, violin
Hannah Burnett, viola
Madeline Fayette, cello
Zachary Hobin, double bass
Miles Fellenberg, piano
Alice Chenyang Xu, piano
Jeff Stern, percussion

Jorge Amado：Vitrales ｜ ACMF Ensemble

All that we see - choral work written for Echo Vocal Ensemble

yeah music

restarting

uke + live electronics improv

sandbox sand sand sand sand sand no bucket

Llen Cadnant

for orchestra

Commissioned by SWR / Donaueschinger Musiktage

A few short bars from the Intermezzo of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Seventh Symphony provide the entire material for this composition. Through the “sampling” of this score fragment, its musical gesture is frozen: it becomes an “animated still life” (Lauren Berlant), an image that slowly drifts by. The material is extremely reduced, yet never exactly identical. The gesture appears in fragments, presented from countless different perspectives. Only the logic of digital processes is capable of achieving such a precision of cuts within the sample, whose artifacts are translated into complex, displaced rhythms and ornamental variety. This careful transcription of digital artifacts is an attempt to approach a perspective of machine listening. 

Each bar is a cut. The result is a continuity that is dialectically dependent on discontinuities. Peter Osborne, in Anywhere or Not at All, refers to Gaston Bachelard: “‘Psychic continuity is not given but made.’ And it is made out of the temporal structure of the relations between acts: ‘What has most duration is what is best at starting itself up all over again.’” In other words: The deepest continuity is paradoxically that which continually restarts or renews itself.

Sunday, 19 October 2025 — 17:00
Donaueschinger Musiktage — Closing Concert

SWR Symphony Orchestra
Elena Schwarz — conductor

The deepest continuity is paradoxically that which continually restarts or renews itself.

Epilogue. Reindeers
(2024)

The final piece in the Kilpisjärvi Sessions cycle emerges as a distant echo of the landscape itself. During my hikes around the lake, starting from the biological station, I encountered reindeers in the distance. Their presence, only hinted at through faint sounds carried by the wind or glimpses across the landscape, became a quiet epilogue to the cycle.

The electronic track was built by recording snippets of the guitar part from "Geology. Earth Data Collector" on a cassette. A tape player was hacked and controlled by Max/MSP via Arduino. The result was mixed with the reindeers' sounds.

@Collettivo_21 : Giulia Pastorino

Recorded at Casa Della Musica San Michele, Montaldeo
Mix: Alessandro Perini

www.collettivo21.com

www.alessandroperini.com

Kilpisjärvi Sessions

Epilogue. Reindeers

Epilogue. Reindeers (Collettivo 21), 2024

Hannah A. Barnes (b. 1997) is a Montréal-based composer and conductor. Her work centres on crafting structured yet dynamic, multi-faceted musical worlds characterized by mercurial, off-kilter, and seemingly incompatible materials. These works straddle tension and expression for both performers and listeners. Barnes' main concerns are (re)defining Modernism in the twenty-first century, investigating manifestations of complexity and polyphony, and addressing questions of syntax and semantics within a non-narrative musical language that encompasses both harmonic and noise-based materials. Having been described by a performer as composing “alien music,” she embraces the strange, unpredictable and mysterious in art of all kinds.

Currently a DMus student at McGill University studying composition with Prof. Philippe Leroux, Hannah completed degrees in composition (MMus w/Distinction ’21, BMus High Honours ’19) from DePaul University, with additional studies in conducting. Collaboration is central to Barnes’s compositional practice. She has worked closely with soloists, including oboist Kyle Bruckmann, guitarist Jesse Langen, hornist Tarre Nelson, vocalist Joanna Mieleszko, percussionist Alexandre Garde, pianist Ian Pace, violinists Bailey Wantuch and Jennifer Gersten, duos Garden Unit and Flannau Duo, and the brass musicians of Ensemble Musikfabrik to develop new works. As composer-in-residence, she composed a large ensemble work for McGill’s Contemporary Music Ensemble in 2024. Upcoming commissions include new works for Boston-based Lamnth (violin + cimbalom), Montréal-based Quatuor Memoire (string quartet + mezzo-soprano), saxophonist Greg Bruce (feedback tenor saxophone), guitarist Jamie Monck and electric guitarist Matt Sargent.

Her work has been performed in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Australia, in programs including the DePaul and Dal Niente Summer Residence for New Music (2020), the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (2021), the Yarn/Wire Summer Institute (2022), Omaha Under the Radar Festival (2022), the Darmstadt Summer Courses (2023, 2025), the Musikfabrik Virtual Brass Academy (2025), and Impuls Academy (2025) and at schools of music including DePaul University, McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, UC Davis, UC Berkeley (CNMAT), the New England Conservatory, the University of Arkansas, Florida State University, Benedictine College, and the City University of London.

Barnes’ work for oboe and electronics, “Dis/inte/gration” (2019, rev. 2020) was recorded by Kyle Bruckmann and included on his album of rivers, released March 2024. Her debut album, Negative Capability: Works by Hannah A. Barnes, was released in December 2024, and includes performances by Ensemble Dal Niente, Kyle Flens, Jesse Langen, Garden Unit, and DePaul University’s Ensemble 20+. Her work has been acknowledged in the Chicago Reader and “Best of Bandcamp,” selected in calls for scores in the United States, Canada and Austria, played on impulsradio (Graz/Helsinki), and awarded an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Awards honourable mention for her work “five images.”

Hannah founded the "rhythm is image" new music initiative after being struck by the inexplicable and insatiable desire to perform Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie I in 2019. She has a special interest in organizing, conducting, and performing in concerts, focusing on experimental performance practice and advocating for “difficult” music. rhythm is image has performed as parts of concert series and festivals in Chicago, Montréal, Omaha (Nebraska), and Fayetteville (Arkansas).

Hannah is also a devoted educator. She has taught theory and aural skills to high schoolers at the Chicago Music Academy (2022-23) and students at DePaul University (as Lecturer of Music Theory from 2021-23), and McGill University (as Lecturer of Music Theory, 2024). While at McGill, she served as president of Le Vivier InterUniversitaire and the McGill Association of Student Composers, and Vice President of the Music Graduate Student Society. She was a Writing Fellow through the Graduate Writing Centre in 2024-25, where she developed and implemented initiatives to support Schulich School of Music graduate students with their written academic milestones. She contributed a chapter on composition pedagogy and approaches to teaching composing for a forthcoming book to be published by Routledge.

Barnes lives in Montréal with her terrier, Kaylee, and maintains a strong connection to her roots in Chicago. Her compositional practice is fuelled by strong coffee, postmodern literature, the study of Irish mythology and tradition, and Pilates.