ARTIST STATEMENT
I write music that explores the liminality of perceptual illusion and the threshold between design and intuition. Uniquely northwestern American light patterns act as an inspiration in much of my music — the way that a piercing slant of light, breaking through a dreary cloudscape, casts an intense, otherworldly chiaroscuro on the landscape — the ethereal yellowness of the light in bas-relief against the yawning darkness of the sky. These stark contrasts in light and dark find their way into my striking combination of pure and dissonant harmonies, widely spaced orchestrations and vast, diffuse timbres.
BIO (short, <300 words)
Huck Hodge is a composer of “harmonically fresh work", "full of both sparkle and thunder” (New York Times). His music has been praised for its “immediate impact” (Chicago Tribune), its "clever, attractive, streamlined" qualities (NRC Handelsblad, Amsterdam) and its ability to "conjure up worlds of musical magic” with “power and charisma" (Gramophone Magazine, London). His musical collaborations include those with members of Ensemble Modern and the Berlin Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Orchestra of the League of Composers, the Aleph, ASKO/Schönberg, Dal Niente, Divertimento, SurPlus and Talea ensembles, the Daedalus, JACK, Mivos, and Pacifica string quartets, and numerous other ensembles.
His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and at numerous major festivals throughout the world — the New York Philharmonic Biennial, Berliner Festspiele, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Shanghai New Music Week, ISCM World Music Days, and many others. His published music is licensed and distributed by Alexander Street Press and Babel Scores (Paris). Recordings of his music appear on the New World and Albany record labels.
Hodge was educated at Columbia University and at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany where he studied with Fred Lerdahl, Tristan Murail, Marco Stroppa, and Georg Wötzer. His major awards include the Charles Ives Living, the largest music award conferred by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rome Prize, the Gaudeamus Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the American Composers Forum, the Barlow Endowment, Music at the Anthology, the Siemens Musikstiftung and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, among many others. Hodge is Professor and Chair of the Composition program at the University of Washington.
BIO (long)
Huck Hodge writes music that explores the liminality of perceptual illusion and the threshold between design and intuition. A composer of “harmonically fresh work", "full of both sparkle and thunder” (New York Times), his music has been praised for its “immediate impact” (Chicago Tribune), its "clever, attractive, streamlined" qualities (NRC Handelsblad, Amsterdam), and its ability to "conjure up worlds of musical magic” with “power and charisma" (Gramophone Magazine, London). There is a dramatic interplay of color, light, and darkness in his music, which emerges from an uncanny blending of pure and dissonant harmonies, widely spaced orchestrations and vast, diffuse timbres.
Hodge is the recipient of many prestigious awards and distinctions. In 2018, he was honored with the Charles Ives Living, the largest music award conferred by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His other major awards include the Rome Prize (Luciano Berio Fellowship), the Gaudeamus Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the American Composers Forum (JFund), the Barlow Endowment, Music at the Anthology (MATA), the American Academy in Rome, Muziek Centrum Nederland, Musik der Jahrhunderte, and the National Theater and Concert Hall of Taiwan, in addition to multiple grants and awards from ASCAP, the Bogliasco Foundation, Copland House, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), the MacDowell Colony, New Music USA, the Siemens Musikstiftung, and the Yaddo Corporation.
His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and at numerous major festivals — the New York Philharmonic Biennial, Berliner Festspiele, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Shanghai New Music Week (上海当代音乐周), ISCM World Music Days, and many others in over twenty countries on five continents. Other performances include those by members of the Berlin Philharmonic and Ensemble Modern, the ASKO / Schönberg Ensemble, the Seattle Symphony, and the Orchestra of the League of Composers. His chamber music has been premiered, performed and recorded by a long list of soloists and ensembles such as the Daedalus, JACK, Mivos, and Pacifica string quartets, the Aleph, Argento, Dal Niente, Divertimento, Insomnio, SurPlus, and Talea ensembles, and his colleagues David Gordon, Donna Shin, Cristina Valdés, Cuong Vu, and Bonnie Whiting. His published music is distributed by Alexander Street Press and Babel Scores (Paris). Recordings of his music appear on the New World and Albany record labels and have been featured in numerous national and international broadcasts.
Before joining the University of Washington, Hodge taught compositon at Columbia University, where he earned his M.A. and D.M.A. studying with Fred Lerdahl, George Lewis, and Tristan Murail. Prior to this, he studied composition, theory, and computer music at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany, where his teachers included Marco Stroppa and Georg Wötzer. He has been an invited lecturer on music and aesthetics at a variety of institutions including the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Eastman School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, NYU, the Universität der Künste in Berlin, and he served for three years as the director of the Merriman Family Young Composers Workshop at the Seattle Symphony. Hodge is Professor and Chair of the Composition program at the University of Washington.