Providence-based violist/composer/improviser Elsie Bae Han seeks out new paths for human connection through music-making. With a hunger for discovery and experimentation, Elsie is always looking for new ways to collaborate with other artists, and engage with new audiences. As a performer, she prioritizes working with living composers to bring new art into the world. She has played with groups such as the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Radius Ensemble. Elsie has attended festivals such as the Avaloch Farm Music Institute, New Music on the Point, and Bowdoin International Music Festival. Elsie is also the violist and founding member of RE:duo (“Reply”) which has held fellowship positions at Cortona Sessions for New Music and Composers' Conference.

 

Elsie’s compositional work centers around vulnerability and human relationship with a focus on the consequences that can arise out of the small interpersonal events we share with one another. Exploring uncanny and surrealist aesthetics, her work reflects on the alienness we all experience from the disconnect that exists between our internal and public identities. Her music brings to attention the physicality required in producing noise and existing in the world we live in. Her work often lives in an interdisciplinary space that creates multimodal creative experiences for audiences to take in sonically and visually. Elsie’s music has been performed at institutions such as Boston Conservatory at Berklee, George Mason University, Valdosta State University, and the University of Georgia Atlanta. Her music was also featured on the 2021 opening concert at the Region IV North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) Conference as well as the 2026 International NASA Conference. In 2023, she had the great privilege of working with the Horizon Ensemble to create act Natural~, a multi-movement theatrical cello concerto with soloist Olivia Katz. 

 

In addition to her creative work, one of Elsie's great passions is creating opportunities for other artists. She is the events coordinator and a founding member of New Music Mosaic (NMM), an organization of young music professionals working for young music professionals. New Music Mosaic offers various different services to music creatives. Our goal is to support people in their creative practices and passion projects. Through NMM Elsie started Timbre, a free, first-come-first-serve, networking project that pairs up composers to performers one-to-one. 

 

Elsie  graduated with a M.M. in Contemporary Classical Music Performance studying under Lila Brown at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and received her undergraduate degrees at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying under Elizabeth Freivogel and Kerrith Livengood.

 

In her free time, you can find Elsie experimenting in the kitchen fusing American and Korean flavors, (trying to) train her cat to do sick tricks, knitting, and watching Adventure Time.