Ryan Hare

Ryan Hare is a composer and bassoonist, and is presently Assistant Professor of Music in bassoon, composition, and theory at Washington State University in Pullman. In 2000, he received his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition from the University of Washington, where he studied bassoon with Arthur Grossman, and composition with Joël-François Durand, Richard Karpen, and Diane Thome. Devoted to new music, Hare has had the privilege of performing many new works written specifically for him while also composing his own musical compositions. Hare’s music has been performed in many venues throughout the United States as well as the Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany. He has performed in many of the top professional orchestras in the Puget Sound region and is the bassoonist for the Solstice Wind Quintet, composer and bassoonist with the Seattle-based new music ensemble Contemporary Chamber Composers and Players, and a member of the Seattle Creative Orchestra. He recently released a full-length CD of his compositions and collaborations, Intrada (2004 Present Sounds), and was named “Composer of the Year” by the Washington State Music Teachers Association.

As part of his Fellowship’s Meet the Artist requirements, Ryan was the featured guest at the Composer Spotlight series at Jack Straw Productions in Seattle, sponsored by the Washington Composers’ Forum. Hare gave an audience-interactive talk, “Fighting the Imaginary Fight: Impulse and Irrationality in Music,” focused on finding solutions to two problems facing contemporary composers: 1) the conventional thinking that new music is neither accepted nor appreciated by the general concert-going public, and what if anything composers should do differently, and 2) the kinds of non-collegial, polemical sniping that sometimes occurs between groups of composers, and how such disagreements can be made more constructively, with the greater needs of new music in mind. The audience participated with comments and questions throughout. Hare also presented recordings of several of his recent pieces, discussing with the audience how the broader philosophical solutions Hare expressed have a correlation to the actual music. Eric Rynes performed Educe/Evoke for solo violin, and the event concluded with a reception and one-on-one interaction with audience members.