PERFORMANCES

While Composer-in-Residence with the South Dakota Symphony I volunteered to make a chamber orchestra arrangement of "Amazing Grace" to accompany the Creekside Singers, a traditional drum group (four men singing in unison and together beating one large drum).  I wrote about the experience here.  My arrangement was first performed in March 2019 on a Lakota Music Project concert in Sioux Falls.  It's back, scaled down to a nonet, on two concerts presented in Washington DC as part of Post Classical Ensemble's Native American Influences festival.  Can't wait to hear it again!

After the exhilaration of composing and hearing Nonghyun, my quintet for gayageum with string quartet, I wanted to try my hand at solo gayageum music.  Gayageum is a traditional Korean zither with a large repertory of music in different styles.  I composed for sanjo gayageum, the traditional 12-string instrument, and produced Four Little Pieces for Gayageum in four different styles.  I am thrilled that HyoJin Kang will premiere the group.  She very generously assisted me in the technical details of composing Nonghyun - which she will also perform on this concert.

Piri virtuoso, master musician Gamin has teamed up with the Lydian String Quartet to create a powerful evening remembering and honoring the Comfort Women of occupied countries in East Asia, who were forced into sexual slavery between 1932-1945.  Violinist Judith Eissenberg has written a lovely blog post about the concert. I am honored that they will perform my Mudang (the title means female shaman) along with new works by Ki Young Kim and Yoon Ji Lee.  Mudang was the first in my series of works composed for gugak (traditional Korean) instruments, and Gamin has championed it with a number of string quartets.

On October 23, the amazing gayageum player HyoJin Kang premiered my Four Little Pieces for Gayageum in Seoul.  On December 12, she brings it to New York!  These little pieces are actually quite virtuosic, span four quite different styles, and add up to a substantial work.  I composed them for HyoJin Kang after she very generously assisted me in the technical details of composing Nonghyun, my quintet for gayageum with string quartet.  On this concert, she will play gayageum sanjo - a pillar of the gugak (traditional Korean) repertory - and other traditional selections.    

Pianist extraordinaire Jenny Q Chai brings her Acqua Alta project to Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., featuring my Face of the Deep.  Composed for her, it's my first piece incorporating video.  It's a fantastic, creative concert about water and how much more of it we'll be seeing with rising sea levels.  Check it out!    

At last comes the pandemic-delayed premiere of Mysteria, commissioned by the Borromeo String Quartet with support from Chamber Music America.  Mysteria is a quintet with percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum that explores permeable boundaries – between percussion and strings, between ethereal and earthy, between sacred and profane.   How appropriate to hear it alongside two of Beethoven late string quartets, as the Borromeos round out their Beethoven cycle.  

The singular artist gamin, for whom I composed Mudang, has integrated the work into her program "Unforgotten Song," which considers the plight of Korean "comfort women" of World War II.  On this concert, Mudang (which means female shaman) will be heard in its duo version, for gamin's piri with Ana Kim on cello.  

The singular artist gamin, for whom I composed Mudang, will perform the work on piri with the string quartet Interwoven, on a program title "Nong."   This concert places instruments and concepts from traditional Korean music alongside a variety of American musical elements.  

The singular artist gamin, for whom I composed Mudang, will perform the work on piri with the string quartet Interwoven, on the Hill and Hollow Music series in Saranac, NY.  Wish I could be there: gamin totally inhabits this work.  

My brand new Piri Concerto for Korean traditional wind instruments premieres this April in multiple cities and towns in West Virginia.  Commissioned by the West Virginia Symphony, the work calls for a pocket-size orchestra of 15, making it easy to tour, along with Aaron Copland's original 13-instrument version of Appalachian Spring.  The amazing artist gamin solos on not only piri, but also saenghwang (a mouth organ) and taepyongso (a trumpet-like double-reed).  Each performance will be preceded by lectures and workshops given by gamin and by me, introducing the instruments and examining cultural and geographic similarities between West Virginia and the Korean peninsula.