Program Notes

The Seattle Symphony
Pianist Bruce Liu performs a program of works by Haydn, Chopin, Kapustin, Rameau and Prokofiev in solo recital (April 2024)
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Joe Hisaishi Returns conducts and performs original works for film scores and the concert stage (December 2023)

Emanuel Ax performs a solo recital of works by Beethoven and Schoenberg (September 2023)

Conrad Tao – This very special single-night, no-intermission program was curated by pianist and composer Conrad Tao, who will perform in the works by Feldman and Mozart, and conduct the Smith and Mozart. (February 2024)

Elgar & Brahms – Sir Stephen Hough performs Brahms' Second Piano Concerto in a program that also includes Elgar's Second Symphony; Mark Wigglesworth conducts. (October 2023)

Feature Articles

"The Many Musical Worlds of Joe Hisaishi" in Encore magazine (January/February 2024)

A Semiotic Approach to Open Notations
​Ambiguity as Opportunity

Series: Elements in Music since 1945
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Along with twentieth-century developments in playing techniques, technologies, and concepts of musical sound, the notations employed by composers have also changed. Composers of what Umberto Eco calls 'open works' often employ intentionally ambiguous music notations. These open notations ask the performer to play a radical and active role in co-creating the musical work. Scores that feature open notations have been part of the Western classical music landscape since the mid-twentieth century, and continue to have a vibrant community of practitioners today. In this Element, Tristan McKay considers intersections of ambiguity, authority, and identity in works with open notations. He develops a semiotic approach to open notation analysis and puts it into practice with in-depth analyses of openly notated works by Earle Brown, Will Redman, and Leah Asher.

Journal Articles

"Conceptual Palettes as Sites of Creative Negotiation in Leah Asher's TRAPPIST-1" in The American Journal of Semiotics (2023)

"Piano Sonatas by the Romanian Spectralist Horatiu Radulescu" in NOTES: Quarterly Journal of the American Music Library Association (2022)

"Graphic Notations as Creative Resilience in Will Redman's Book (2006)" in Semiotics 2018: Resilience in an Age of Relation (2019)

Music Criticism