THE ARTIST
Starting the violin at age 4, and ballet not long after at 5, Han's fierce ears and brave body were relieved to have these methods of expression at their disposal.
“Here, is the air that I need to breathe”
As her art developed, Hannah rejected being pushed into boxes.
Finding ballet too gendered and restrictive, she ventured into the world of modern dance.
Finding the harp world equally stifling, her best option was to create an entirely new repertoire.
With some years of violin and piano behind her, and in full understanding that a musical life was ahead of her - Han, at age 9, declared that she was going to get a job and buy herself a harp. She appeared at a neighbor’s dairy farm, and strongly suggested that they hire her, she was ready for employment.
At the generous rate of $1.50 an hour, Han was now working as a cow-teat washer. Despite finding herself often kicked into the manure pile, Han (with the help of her parents), eventually acquired a harp, and it stuck. She was seriously studying piano, harp, composition, and modern dance by the time she was a young teenager - and even then knew that her life required a combination of these modes of expression for her to be allowed to flourish.
At 15, Han was accepted at Eastman on harp, and was enrolled at 16. It was a difficult transition. Where did dance and composition fit into this new reality? Where was the possibility of collaboration on this incredibly isolating instrument?
This was not the right path.
Han left Eastman and took a year off to study and to dance, and was offered a position in a modern dance company. But something was still left unfinished in their musical life…
After returning to Eastman, finishing as a composition major. Han went straight on to Harvard to start her PhD in composition, followed by a 2-year stint at the Cleveland Institute of Music for an Artists Diploma in harp, and then back to Harvard to complete her PhD.
Not being properly fed by academia and finding her pursuits out of balance, Han found themself immersed in the dance world yet again, while moonlighting as an off-broadway musician. Despite being close to the balance she was seeking, the churning cycle she kept getting swept up in had one more degree in store for her, and she completed her Artists Diploma in composition at Yale in 2012.
Months after completing her final degree, she established herself as a professor at Yale (and a newly minted mother). Han signed with Schott publishing, had commissions with major orchestras, performed her own harp concerto at Carnegie Hall - but there was still something missing.
Why can’t it be and instead of or?
Now a professor at the Jacobs School of Music @ Indiana University, LASH is embarking on fusing her art together on her own terms.
They write brutal, living, ecstatic pieces expanding the harp repertoire that is set to modern dance. Han wants the performer, student, listener, and audience member to all experience the full range of human emotions in her pieces, and hopes that shared experience inspires a sense of human belonging.