Since its founding in 2010, Seattle Modern Orchestra (SMO) has premiered over 47 new works written just for the group.

📣 We are thrilled to announce that we are recording our first album of commissions, Against/Time, featuring music by Wang Lu, Huck Hodge, and our founding director Jérémy Jolley.

🎚️ New Focus Recordings, a NYC-based independent music label specializing in contemporary concert music, will launch the project, and we will track the album with Grammy-nominated engineer Andrew Munsey at the University of Washington’s brand new in-house recording studio.

Throughout the last 6 months, we have quietly raised over $15,000 to support this ambitious project, and are launching a public matching campaign.

🎶 ABOUT THE PROJECT:

The album features pieces developed over years of close collaboration, and these selections represent the essence of SMO’s creative and curatorial ethos.

📚 Lu’s The Nothing Man and Other Tales (a 2022 Barlow commission) features SMO soprano Maria Mannisto in a playfully inventive setting of Gianni Rodari’s classic childhood tales.

Soprano Maria Mannisto (PC: Michelle Cheng)

🥁 Hodge’s 2019 Koussevitsky-winning percussion concerto The shape of the wind, the shadow of time integrates extended techniques, found objects, and discarded 80’s technology with a performance by SMO co-Artistic director Bonnie Whiting.

👥 Jolley’s work (contro-)clessidra is a series of layered bespoke duos crafted over more than a decade for SMO’s musicians.

Co-Artistic Director Julia Tai and composer Huck Hodge in an SMO rehearsal (PC: Amy Vandergon)

Co-Artistic Director Bonnie Whiting (PC: Amy Vandergon)

🫶 HOW YOU CAN HELP:

Your support will help us to cover the costs associated with producing, editing and launching the album, and to pay our musicians. This year we have raised our musician fees to better support our local artists, and we are excited to create an album that features some of our largest ensemble works.

Some examples of where your donation could help:

$250 covers: Packing and Shipping of CDs
$500 covers: One Day of a Musician’s Fee
$700 covers: Cost of Disc Replication
$2,500 covers: Label Administration Fees
$4,000 covers: Engineering in the Studio

A gift of any amount helps us bring this creative vision to life. Thank you! ❤️

Support Seattle Modern Orchestra’s album against/Time