Octave 9 Series: Samuel Adams presents Etudes and Devotions

By Leilani Polk

If you haven’t had a chance to experience Benaroya Hall’s intimate, innovative Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center, we have a whole new season of Octave 9 Series concerts in the space that will give you a dozen more chances to be awestruck and captivated. All happen on Fridays, at 7 and 9pm, and feature contemporary composers in exciting and sometimes groundbreaking programs. 

A week before composer Samuel Adams’ No Such Spring piano concerto is performed by Conor Hanick on the mainstage with the Seattle Symphony and Judith Fong Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot, Hanick and Adams are featured in the season’s first Octave 9 Series program on Friday, October 16: Etudes and Devotions. 

Adams is a Seattle-based composer with an international profile. He’s been commissioned by institutions ranging from the San Francisco Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic to the New World Symphony, Australian Chamber Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This program showcases Adams’ Etudes, commissioned by Hanick for his students at the Music Academy of the West. The Santa Barbara Independent hailed what became a large-scale "etude" as "a jewel of another sheen." Also on the program is the U.S premiere and Seattle Symphony co-commission of Devotions, which integrates electronics with percussion by Mari Yoshinaga and strings by a Seattle Symphony string quartet that includes Adams violinist wife and our Clowes Family Associate Concertmaster Helen Kim, Acting First Assistant Concertmaster Emerson Millar, Viola Ursula Steele and Associate Principal Cello Meeka Quan DiLorenzo. The work explores "architectural and resonant multi-movement forms."

Next up in the Octave 9 Series: The World of György Kurtág on Friday, November 6.