Boston-based violist/composer/improvisor Elsie Bae Han seeks out new paths for human connection through music-making. With a focus on new chamber music, Elsie hopes to present accessible concerts and musical resources to the general public as well as the music world. She graduated with a M.M. in Contemporary Classical Music Performance under the tutelage of Lila Brown at the Boston Conservatory, and received her undergraduate degrees at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying under Elizabeth Freivogel and Kerrith Livengood.

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As a composer, Han is particularly interested in understanding the mundanities of life through the creation of sound worlds that exist between notes, e. g. the unique technical sounds produced by each instrument or sound-making object. Her music brings to attention the physicality required in producing noise and aims to distort the feeling of the passage of time. It also attempts to express the absurdity that exists in regularity and routine. What we as humans rely on to fill so much of our lives. 

 

Elsie’s music was featured on the opening concert for the 2021 NASA (North American Saxophone Alliance) Region IV conference. She has also had her music performed at institutions such as the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, the University of Arkansas, and she recently had her first large ensemble piece premiered by the Horizon Ensemble in Boston. She is the events coordinator and a founding member of the New Music Mosaic (NMM), an organization of young music professionals working for young music professionals. Through NMM Elsie started Timbre, a free, first-come-first-serve, networking project that pairs up composers to performers one-to-one. 

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As a performer, Han seeks out meaningful musical connection and exploratory spaces for sound investigation. Always searching for new and interesting sounds, she prioritizes working with living and upcoming composers. Elsie is the violist in the saxophone/viola duo, RE:duo and works as a freelance musician in the Greater Boston Area. Elsie has attended festivals such as New Music on the Point, the Castleman Quartet Program, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and recently attended the Cortona Sessions for New Music as an ensemble fellow with RE:duo (saxophone/viola).