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: Guest Orchestra Concert: Seattle Modern Orchestra, '90/100'

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Seattle Modern Orchestra’s (SMO's) University of Washington residency celebrates the legacies of longtime former School of Music professors and West Coast luminaries Stuart Dempster (b. 1936) and William O. Smith (1926-2020) with '90/100, Celebrating Stuart Dempster, William O. Smith, and West Coast Experimentalism.' Curated by longtime SMO clarinetist Rachel Yoder, the evening integrates elements of improvisation, deep listening, and playfully creative movement while rebooting elements of the composer/performer duo’s historic antics. SMO is joined by all-star guests C. Neil Parsons (Boston) on bass trombone and movement and Yoder on clarinets. Expect movement throughout the space and embodied, theatrical music-making, as well as the sonic high of Smith’s wild and wonderful extended clarinet techniques.ProgramPauline Oliveros: The Well and the Gentle (1985)William O. Smith: Encounter (1970)Rachel Yoder: Double Void (WORLD PREMIERE)Curtis K. Hughes: chewing gum tornado (2026)William O. Smith: Explorations for clarinet and chamber orchestra (1998)Stuart Dempster: S.M.O.R.E.S (2017)* SMO Commission Program Note“Ten years ago, in the fall of 2016, there was an '80 and 90' concert at Meany Hall in celebration of the 80th birthday of Stuart Dempster and the 90th birthday of William O. “Bill” Smith. It was a tradition that apparently began with a 40/50 concert in 1976, and though Bill passed away in 2020, it brings me great joy that we can now celebrate Stuart’s 90th birthday, and what would have been Bill’s 100th!Stuart and Bill are names well-known to the Seattle experimental music scene and beyond, as composers and performers of course, but also due to their three decades as co-leaders of the UW Contemporary Group (1968-1997). As I researched for this concert, looking through Contemporary Group papers and programs in the UW library, I was struck by the staggering number of performances they put on over the years, often involving dozens of faculty and students. Many of these people are still playing and creating music in Seattle (including in our own SMO!), and we must give thanks in part to Stuart and Bill for the thriving, multifaceted contemporary music community we enjoy today.So what, in 2026, is the musical legacy of Stuart and Bill? For me, it’s very personal: Bill was my inspiration to begin to consider myself a “composer” at the age of 40. From the time we met in 2015 until he passed away in 2020, I had the amazing opportunity to get to know Bill – improvising with him, getting advice on playing his music, then working on a couple new solo pieces he wrote for me. He showed me (through his always kind and curious example) a different route to composition that I had never considered, ultimately helping me find my way to myself.The musical spirit of Stuart Dempster and William O. Smith lives on, here on campus, in the Seattle new music community, and well beyond.”—Rachel Yoder, curatorPauline Oliveros: The Well and the Gentle (1983)Rachel Yoder: Double Void (2026)The Well and the Gentle (1983) is one of the most structured and detailed examples of Oliveros' text-based intuitive pieces. Musicians are given a different scale for each of the two sections with one rhythmic motif for the second section and instructions for musical interaction. Oliveros often wrote music based on 'an inclusive and interdependent and unfolding world of relationships.' In this work, performers are asked to 'match,' 'support,' 'soar,' 'merge,' and 'listen.' In between these choices, performers individually return to 'The Well': the source and resting place of silence. Players are asked to collaborate, focus, react and make imaginative choices. Only then can musicians 'pass through stages of awakening to the possibilities inherent in making music, working together, leading to the essence of what can shape musical impulses and individual freedom simultaneously.'During her long work with Dempster and the Deep Listening Band, Oliveros explored site-specific resonance. For this event, Seattle Modern Orchestra utilizes the beautiful acoustics of the Meany Center’s Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater in non-conventional ways, sometimes dispersing musicians throughout the hall or experimenting with spatialized sound to challenge and transform a conventional listening experience. Likewise, curator, composer, and clarinetist Rachel Yoder has created Double Void for SMO with the hall’s unique resonance capabilities in mind. Pairs of musicians are spread to the extreme edges of the hall. Yoder’s process involves both careful listening in the moment and advance preparation, charging musicians to complete a pre-performance worksheet embedded with choices for each pair of players. Yoder writes:'Double Void is a meditation on the substance of emptiness, the weight of absence, and multiplication of nothing. The score itself is empty of notes, but full of poetic instructions, rhythmic values, and dynamic indications, creating echo effects and textures with room for choice on the part of the performers.'

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