composers

Jean Hasse

• Next Dance

Jean Hasse (b.1958, Cleveland, Ohio, USA) graduated from Oberlin College Conservatory, Ohio, specialising in piano, conducting and instrumental music education, followed by graduate work and teaching at Cleveland State University. Her varied career has included working as a teacher, multi-instrumentalist, concert producer, music copyist, editor and publisher, including forming Visible Music in 1987. She has had composing residencies at U.S. artist colonies and has received commissions from soloists and chamber ensembles in the U.S. and U.K. She moved to England in December 1994 and works as a composer, pianist and publisher.

Hasse's music has been heard throughout North America, Europe, Japan and Australia, with performances at such diverse venues as the Tanglewood Music Center, Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, London's South Bank Centre, and at numerous festivals. Many of her works attempt to give audiences a slightly unusual listening experience, with some pieces beginning as extra-musical ideas that are transformed into sound.

Compositions include "Oh" (small ensemble), Reflecting Dreams (fifty brass), Moths - for a few hundred whistlers, Tuning ('piano tuner' and ensemble), Pocket Pieces (piano), and other works for chamber, brass ensembles, chorus, soloists and film. In 2001 Hasse designed a project for the Internet company iobox, composing dozens of short pieces for Nokia mobile phones ('ring tones'). Her 1999 CD, kinkh, featuring piano music and two chamber works, is on the Visible Music label. Visible Music