This is a past event.
Sun, Sep 14, 2025 8pm
Moore Musical Arts Center, Bryan Recital Hall
Guest Artist Eunmi Ko, piano will give a recital. Free and open to the public.
PROGRAM
Sa-ak* | Jared Redmond
Persistence of Melancholy | Robert Voisey
Little Suite* | Daniel Pesca (world premiere)
I. Prelude
II. Corrente
III. Sarabande
IV. Gigue en rondeau
Le rêve caché* | Hwaen Ch’uqi (world premiere)
Suite for piano* | David Liptak (world premiere)
Prelude
Bourrée
Sarabande
Forlane
Menuet
Gigue
TATTOO (world premiere) | Tyler Kline
Part I: obliterate all prior things
Part II: shadow work
*denotes works written for Eunmi Ko
PROGRAM NOTES & BIOS
Sa-ak (四樂 / 邪惡) was originally planned as a suite of four character pieces, with contrasting motivic and harmonic materials inspired by four homophonous Sino-Korean characters all pronounced "Ak." Multiple variations on these original ideas eventually combined into a one-movement work, shifting freely between those four harmonic and expressive worlds, with a labyrinthine narrative of contrasts, reappearances, and metamorphoses. Sa-ak is thus a ruined set of variations; a collapsed fantasia. It was composed from 2020-21 and is dedicated to pianist Eunmi Ko.
Jared Redmond is a pianist-composer from the San Francisco Bay Area, currently based in Berlin. As a composer, Jared’s works deal especially in literary and historical allusion, expressive microtonalism, and increasingly, music for the piano. Living in Seoul for nearly a decade, Jared researched traditional Korean aristocratic music and notation at the Academy of Korean Studies and the Kyujanggak Institute of Seoul National University; he develops experimental compositions and new notation systems for Korean traditional performers. From 2018-20 he was Visiting Scholar-Professor of Composition and Music Theory at Hanyang University, and from 2020-24 he taught at the Seoul National University School of Music. Jared’s compositions, and his performances of classical and new music, have appeared in concert halls, universities, and small experimental venues throughout North America, Europe, and East Asia. www.jaredredmond.com.
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Persistence of Melancholy explores the unyielding nature of depression, where moments of hope briefly surface only to be drawn back into resignation. Through delicate shifts in texture and dynamic contrast, the piano work captures a cycle of struggle that never fully releases its grip. Each recurrence underscores melancholy’s presence as an ever-returning force. Debuted at Carnegie Hall in 2019 and later included on the album ENDURANCE, the piece stands as a poignant meditation on the human condition: the fragile tension between glowing aspiration and the shadows that persist, echoing a truth both intimate and universally felt.
Robert Voisey has a bit of music played in many places. Beginning with modest pieces for friends and small ensembles, his work gradually found its way to concerts, festivals, and broadcasts around the world. As a composer, his output spans chamber music, vocal works, and adventurous multimedia experiments. Yet he is best known as the creator of groundbreaking platforms such as 60x60 and Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame, projects that have given thousands of composers and performers opportunities to be heard. Called “madness that makes the cultural world go round” by The New York Times, Voisey’s vision continues to inspire and empower new music communities. www.VoxNovus.com.
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Composed for Eunmi Ko, my Little Suite for solo piano is a conversation with the Baroque keyboard collections by Bach, Rameau and Couperin. What does it mean to write in these time-honored forms in 2025; how does my musical language fit into, or stretch, their boundaries? After a spirited, perpetual-motion Prelude, the Corrente playfully alternates between fleet passagework, mini-explosions, and suspended resonances. Shadows get longer and deeper in the Sarabande, which unfolds as though scored for antiphonal choirs. It ends with a hushed, mysterious coda. I composed the Gigue en Rondeau while watching a beautiful snowfall; the movement’s flickering, delicate ornamentation echoes the sunlight playing across the snowflakes.
Daniel Pesca has been called “the perfect composer-virtuoso pianist” (All about the Arts). Noted for their poetry and lyricism, his works have been commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Howard Hanson Institute, and New Music USA. He has composed for the American Wild Ensemble, Constellation Chamber Concerts, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition, the Oberlin Contemporary Ensemble, and Sound Impact. An album of his music, Walk with me, my joy, appeared on New Focus Recordings this June.
As pianist, Daniel has taken part in the premiere of about 200 works. He is a member of the Grossman Ensemble and the Zohn Collective, and he appears on 20 commercial recordings (including a solo album, Promontory). He has performed as concerto soloist in his own Up North, as well as works by Messiaen, Bernstein, Stravinsky, and others. He is on the composition faculty at the Eastman School of Music. https://www.danielpesca.com.
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Le rêve caché The Hidden Dream
An Inca Indian and a native of Perú, Hwaen Ch'uqi enjoys world-wide acclaim and an equally wide-ranging career. As pianist, he has performed in venues from Alice Tully Hall in NYC to Philharmonic Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia. As a composer, he has received commissions from institutions such as MTNA and the University of British Columbia School of Music; orchestras such as the Taipei Civic and the Cusco Symphony Orchestras, and individuals such as James VanDemark of the Eastman School of Music. He holds B.M. and M.M. degrees in Piano Performance from the Eastman School, studying under Natalya Antonova.
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Suite for piano (2025)
Suite, composed for pianist Eunmi Ko, is a collection of six short pieces that take their titles and character from keyboard dance suites of the past. The particular models are found in Bach’s French suites, and the titles are Prelude, Bourrée, Sarabande, Forlane, Menuet, and Gigue. Keyboard suites are more less collections of dances that vary greatly in style and form, and I wrote my suite with composers like Ravel, Schoenberg, Debussy, Bartok, and … J.S. Bach looking over my shoulder.
David Liptak's music has been described as “luminous and arresting,” “richly
atmospheric,” and having “transparent textures, incisive rhythms, shimmering
lightness.” His compositions have been performed throughout the United States
and abroad, and recordings of his music are found on the Bridge, Albany, New Focus, Innova, and other labels. David Liptak was recognized with the Elise L. Stoeger Prize, given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and he has received many awards that include those from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition. Much of his recent music has explored the poetry and magical quality of stars and starlight, imagined and real. His large piano work Constellations has been performed and recorded by Eunmi Ko on Innova Recordings. https://www.dliptak.com
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“Another tattoo is never going to make me younger, or tougher, or more relevant… At best it’s a reminder that you’re still alive and lucky as hell. Another tattoo, another thing you did. Another place you’ve been.”
~Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown, Season 6, Episode 7: Borneo
I have seven tattoos, each tied to places, people, or periods that have shaped me. More and more, I’m interested in tattoos simply for their existence; the way each one chisels me closer to a truer version of myself. TATTOO mirrors that duality: both a metaphorical reflection on permanence and a literal rendering of the tattoo process in sound.
The piece unfolds in two parts: Part 1 ("obliterate all prior things") as line work, Part 2 ("shadow work") as shading. Tattoo-like textures appear in repetition, evolving harmonies, and the spaciousness of starts and stops. From the pianist’s perspective, the score begins with almost no traditional musical information – a single pitch stretched across time with graphic notation. Gradually, more detail is added: rhythm, then tempo, then meter, until traditional notation emerges. Like a tattoo, the image only comes into focus through the act of making it.
What lingers beneath is a thread of memory... quiet moments with people and places that continue to shape me. Composing this piece over three years was not just a matter of struggle, but a necessary process that pushed me toward a new way of thinking about my music. TATTOO is both process and meditation: a ritual in sound where image, memory, and transformation converge.
Tyler Kline (b. 1991; he/him) is a composer, audio engineer, and radio broadcaster whose music explores impermanence, memory, and the quiet poetry of things slipping from view. Deeply influenced by the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, his work spans chamber, orchestral, and electroacoustic forms, and has been performed in 18 countries. Tyler also hosts Modern Notebook, a nationally syndicated radio program, and founded Loose Leaf Transmissions, home to the podcast music/Maker. Originally from rural Kentucky, he now lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Susanna, and their cat, Tofu. Learn more and listen at www.tylerklinemusic.com.
Audience members are reminded to silence alarm watches, pagers and cellular phones before the performance. As a matter of courtesy and copyright law, no recording or unauthorized photographing is allowed. BGSU is a nonsmoking campus.
