I was invited to Vermont as one of the 3 young composers of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival. From Aug. 16-26th, we got to experience world class musicians’ performances, informative talks and masterclases, and a recording session of our own compositions produced by Grammy Award winner Alan Bise.

And what truly makes this festival special is the immense amount of 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 (between performers, the music and the audience members), 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲 (born from the safe space and time the schedule provides), and 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝗱 (thanks to the incredibly generous supporters).

Thank you to Jusun Kim, Hannah Chaewon-Kim, Misha Amory, Nagyeom Jang, and Gloria Chien for bringing my piece “𝕆𝕦𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕎𝕠𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕕” to life, and to Alan for the awesome recording! And much love to composers David Serkin Ludwig, Alistair Coleman, Jonah Cohen, and Delfin Demiray, and to our gracious host, Barbara.

Check out my piece, Out of Wonderland!!

Is orchestra music my calling??

I spent June 4-9th at Albany Symphony's 2024 American Music Festival, for the composition workshop with fantastic composer and educator Christopher Theofanidis. It was an intense (in the best way possible) few days analyzing orchestral techniques of 20th century composers (listed below for anyone interested). I admire his arsenal of adjectives for describing various textures and colors of specific orchestration techniques. 

Each participant wrote a short sinfonietta piece for a small group of Albany Symphony members to read and perform. I wrote the third movement of my work-in-progress Scarlet Symphony, and I got a much needed experience of solving problems and efficiently voicing my wants within precious minutes. It was a joy working with Maestro David Alan Miller again. [Pearl of the Brook]

I learned that time works differently in an orchestral setting compared to a smaller ensemble, and that an orchestra piece is a playground for exploration and fun. I recommend this workshop (for advanced undergrad—grad students) whole heartedly!

Music is the past, the present, and the future. We learn from the past and take action in the present to affect future generations of musicians. The non-profit organization United Sound did just that: observe a lack of diversity among the composers whose music is played by school ensembles and invest in a recording project for rising composers of minoritized groups, “to amplify the voices of emerging BIPOC and female composers within the classical music education sphere.”

I recently had the joy of flying out to Chattanooga, TN (May 11-12) for United Sound’s first ever recording project.  I got to spend an hour working with the members of the Chattanooga Symphony to record a string orchestra piece I wrote in 2018 called Midnight Visitor  (grade 2-2.5 level: second-third year student players). With this professional recording, United Sound has provided a great resource for me to share my music. Thank you, United Sound!!

More info here! 

April 19th and 20th, the Princeton University Orchestra and Princeton University Glee Club came together for another joint concert this academic year for Elgar’s masterpiece, The Dream of Gerontius. This time, Gabriel Crouch, the director of PUGC and the professor of the conducting class I am taking this semester, took on the conducting role. He knew the piece inside and out, and it was a joy getting to play such a striking piece of music. 

As the co-publicity chair of the Glee Club, it was a pleasure creating and sending out all the advertisement announcements and posters! 

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March 13th, 2024: some alumni members of the National Youth Orchestra of the U.S.A. came together in NYC for a spectacular 3 days of rehearsals and Carnegie Hall performance with Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin and pianist Daniil Trifonov. Most musicians were from the early years of NYO, all the way back to the founding year of 2013. It was inspiring to get to talk with those who are now pursuing or enjoying a professional career in music and everyone so passionate and hard-working. 

Maestro’s memorable words: 

• It’s not dragging the notes. It’s loving each note.
• It’s a hair flat. Not like your hair, my hair. Disappearing hair. (His hair looks great).
• Instead of  thinking of playing “not too loud”, thinking “attack in a vocal way”.
• Choral conducting is a great way to enter the world of conducting.

Some beautiful pictures from the one and only Chris Lee: 

YoungArts Week - we all wished that it was YoungArts Month instead, as time flew by during our time together in Miami. It is a place where you meet very special, inspiring people. In December, reminiscing our YoungArts Week finale performance of Bohemian Rhapsody, the 2023 YoungArts Finalist Winners in Classical Music virtually came together for a virtual collaboration of my arrangement, Happy New Year (ABBA)! We would like to wish everyone a beautiful, warm, joyous 2024.

I am very grateful to be in both the orchestra and the glee club at Princeton, the trust that both directors put in me and my commitment to music. On December 1st and 2nd, PUO had a concert and collaborated with PUGC on one of the pieces. That was one of the best musical experiences—filling the Richardson auditorium with so many textures and colors. 

• Mozart's Overture to The Magic Flute
• Tailleferre Concerto for Two Pianos, Saxophones, Chorus and Orchestra
• Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F Major

The Princeton Chamber Choir took a weekend trip to Atlanta, Georgia for the National Collegiate Choral Organization’s 10th Biennial Conference, “Coming Home,” hosted by Morehouse College on Nov. 11, 2023! We sang Francis Poulenc’s Figure Humaine, an eight-movement piece for double SMATBB choir that the Chamber Choir has been preparing since three years before I arrived on Princeton campus. I am so grateful that I got to sing this piece as a freshman because the more time I spent with the work in and out of rehearsals, the more I learned that some people do not have the opportunity to perform this massive monster of a piece. The biggest challenge was the French pronunciation for me, and the chromatic, unpredictable and at times jazzy melodies that weave in and out of each other certainly made it more challenging. But it was a fun challenge, and I teared up with many others during the final chord at the performance. 

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I love the fall season! Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Glee Clubs participate in collaborative “football concerts” each football season where we visit or welcome our friendly rivals and sing. I really enjoyed singing our diverse repertoire in Glee, belting out Poulenc’s Figure Humaine (what a beautiful monster of a piece!) with the Chamber Choir, and playing the 4-hand piano accompaniment part with a friend for the Princeton football medley that closed our concerts. 

I am so thrilled and grateful and excited to be a part of this music making in college! 

10.28.23 Princeton at Harvard (video - featuring an actual brawl?!) 

11.4.23 Yale at Princeton

Tomorrow, October 12th 2023, the Princeton University Glee Club is singing with the GRAMMY Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer @ 7:30pm, Richardson Hall! We had our rehearsal with the guest singers today, and I was awed by their angelic voices. Not only do they sing in tune with good tone, but they masterfully shape and color the sounds with their vocal chords. I am so excited to sing with them at the concert and hear the other songs they have prepared outside of Princeton. 

Concert info: https://concerts.princeton.edu/events/23-24-chanticleer/