Northern VA and Washington DC Tour

We spent the last week of June in Nortern Virginia and Washington D.C. to play two recitals: Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Association's Lyceum Summer Series and a house concert at our friend David's house in DC. Aside from our musical engagements, I and Grace got to enjoy the Smithsonian Institute, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the DC Marina, old town Alexandria, and of course some wonderful companies. 

Choi-Kim Duo Recital at Alexandria's Lyceum, sponsored by the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Association

Our program included: Martinu Sonatina, Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata, Devienne's Clarinet Sonata No. 2, Cantilene by Louis Cahuzac, "After you, Mr. Gershwin!" by Béla Kovács, and the world premiere performance of Bright River by Peter Lieuwen (commissioned by our duo in 2014). We quickly found out that it's a challenging but truly enjoyable program for everyone.

 Visiting Northern VA is always sentimental as a place where I spent a good part of my youth growing up. I look forward to visiting again next year with another interesting program and see my old and new friends in the area. 

Seafood market at Southwest Washington Marina where you can enjoy some fresh and delicious food!

Almost overwhelming Basilica with some amazing architecture and mosaic in Byzantine style. The mass here was accaompanied by a superb organ playing. 

At our friend David's beautiful house in DC. In addition to our program, I and Grace each played with David: Brahms Hungarian Dances for four hands and Finzi's Bagatelles.  

NYC Trip

I had a wonderful weekend in NYC meeting and catching up with some friends and visiting the studios of Buffet and Vandoren!

Me and Grace with clarinetist and friend Thomas Piercy

Playing some duets at Tom's apartment at the Manhattan Plaza!

It was a great day here at the NY Showroom! We had a wonderful visit from Prof of Clarinet at Tennessee Tech University...

Posted by Buffet Group USA New York Showroom on Thursday, May 14, 2015

2015 Summer Plan

An unrelated image taken several years ago in Minneapolis, MN. 

May 13-18 - New York City and Alpine, NJ

May 30-June 5 - Chapel Hill, NC

June 20-25 - Washington D.C. and Northern VA 

June 26-30 - Greensboro, NC

July 1-3 - Harlaxton, UK 

July 4-8 - London, UK

July 8-19 - Greensboro, NC

July 20-26 - Madrid, Spain 

July 27-August 1 - Greensboro and Raleigh, NC

I am looking forward to a busy but fun-filled summer! In May, I will be in Alpine, NJ and NYC, visiting friends and family as well as doing some consulting works. I was also invited to be an Artist-in-Residence at local youth orchestra in Murfreesboro and will work with young musicians there at the end of the month. I will need to find some time here and there to work on edits for two of my upcoming CDs (enahke's Piazzolla CD on MSR and Krehl's chamber music on Naxos) as well as a clarinet textbook for my studio.  

In June, I will return to Chapel Hill Chamber Music Workshop (my sixth year). Aside from working with many long-time participants and friends, I am excited to welcome my friends from the Larchmere String Quartet to be this year's ensemble-in-residence with whom I will perform Stephan Krehl's Clarinet Quintet, op. 19. I am also looking forward to performing a series of recitals in Northern VA (Lyceum Chamber Music Series) and D.C. area with Grace, featuring the world premiere performance of Peter Lieuwen's Bright River for Clarinet and Piano (the work we commissioned), as well as works by Bernstein, Devienne, Martinu, and more. Later in June, I will take up a residence at my friend Jacob's house in Greensboro, NC. with Grace, who will serve on the piano faculty at the Eastern Music Festival for the next five weeks. 

July will be a very busy month for me, as I will make couple of overseas trips. First, I will be visiting my students at the Harlaxton Chamber Music Festival earlier that month. You can read about this on my recent blogpost. I am also excited to collaborate with my friend and amazing pianist Sasha Karpeyev. Sasha will perform with me in Madrid at this year's ICA Conference in Madrid, and we will work on a number of projects (including our US performance in March 2016) during my stay in London. I have not seen Sasha since our time together at Norfolk Chamber Music Festival back in 2011 and am really looking forward to our collaboration. After couple weeks off in Greensboro, I will be back in Europe to be a part of ICA ClarinetFest in Madrid, where I will present the European premiere of Peter Lieuwen's new work for clarinet and piano. 

For more details and specific dates/times/venues, please visit my calendar page. I am much relieved that I will be back home in August to get ready for 2015-16. It will be a demanding academic year with 19 students and 5 senior student recitals as well as some major performance opportunities for me. Please stay tuned for some great projects planned for the next season!

Harlaxton International Music Festival

Harlaxton Music Festival

I am extremely proud of my students, Torey Hart, Sarah McMichen, and Anjali Sivaainkaran, who are accepted to Harlaxton International Music Festival in UK (June 28-July 5) and named recipients of TTU's URECA grant ($2,500 each). They will travel to UK this summer to study with my colleagues from the Larchmere String Quartet and other international faculty members and perform some great chamber music. I will travel to Harlaxton as well during my London residency that week to work with the students at the festival. We spent many hours preparing the application materials for the festival and grants, and I am thrilled that all three will be able to make this work in the end!

Congratulations to my students, Torey, Anjali and Sarah, who will attend the Festival as URECA fellows!


TTU Symphony Band in Chicago

TTU Symphony Band clarinet section on stage at Chicago Symphony Center

It was a pleasure to accompany my students in TTU Symphony Band during their trip to Chicago last weekend. The ensemble prepared some great selections, including Frank Ticheli's Blue Shades, which features a number of exciting solos for clarinet and bass clarinet (you can watch the performance clip here).  I was immensely thrilled and proud to hear my students' outstanding playing at all rehearsals and concert I got to attend that weekend. 

Warming up for at a local HS before the big performance in the evening

Look how happy my students are!

Aside from all the playing, we got to do other fun things as well such as going to CSO/Uchida concert on Saturday evening and spontaneous ice cream social at midnight in downtown Chicago...

An evening with TTU clarinet students at Chicago Symphony Concert

Uchida directed and performed CSO on Saturday evening!

And of course, I took my studio out to a midnight ice cream adventure in the city!

TTU Symphony Band at Chicago Symphony Center

The TTU entourage had fun enjoying the concert from the box seats

enhake in Bronwsville

Inside the Beautiful Hall at UTB

enhake resumed its work after an exhausting performing and recording schedule in Colorado back in January. This time, we flew to Brownsville, TX to perform at their Patron of Arts Series and work with the music students at UTB. Our cellist Katie is the low strings professor there, and we had a great time meeting some wonderful students and faculty members. On a plus side, the Mexican cuisine in town was truly exceptional! Our concert on Friday evening featuring Mackey's Breakdown Tango, Gabriel Lena Frank's Hilos, and Brent's arrangement of various tangos was received by great enthusiasm. We are now gearing up for our busy season next year with concerts in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming!  ​

Impressive Chandelier in the Hall

UTB Performing Arts Center

Some very authentic tacos

Eclectic Food Adventure in Atlanta

Here is the first of my food adventure blogpost:

I and Grace spent a night in Atlanta for our second wedding anniversary(!) on our way back home from my orchestra weekend in GA. Atlanta is not an unfamiliar city for either of us, and we decided to focus on food adventures during our stay. I already made a dinner reservation at Nan Thai Fine Dining in Midtown few days earlier, so all we had to do was to find a place to eat lunch and hang out. Thanks to our friend Jessica's suggestion, we decided to check out the Atlanta Food Truck Park. We came with high hopes, but we were a bit disappointed with the limited food selections. They also had small number of merchants carrying various products by local craftsmen. It was a fun afternoon (especially when Grace spilled my lemonade on my loaded cheese fries--and yes, we settled on some hot dogs and fries in the end), but the food was rather subpar. However, a photographer from Jezebel happen to come by and take our photo so perhaps our presence at the Food Truck Park will be permanently documented...

Our evening at Nan Thai Fine Dining was much for satisfying. The place looked fantastic and had complimentary valet parking. The menu was sleek and easy to navigate. Most importantly, the food tasted really good and very reasonably priced. 

It is remarkable how time flies so fast. For us, it was a perfect place for us to reminisce our past two years of high-paced but extremely fulfilling life together. Our choices: Pla Muk Thod (crispy calamari) for appetizer; Grace ordered a special pork dish (the best choice of all), I got a chicken Panang curry, and we both got Singha. We would certainly come back here and recommend the place to anyone who happen to pass by Atlanta for some delicious Thai food. 

Pla Muk Thod

What's in Your Luggage?

I bought this carry-on case during my first year at graduate school. It has served me faithfully, and now I can pack up to two weeks worth of stuff in it. For this four-day trip, I had plenty of rooms for few extra things (see below),

When I first started this blog, I wanted to write some non-music related posts every now and then. So here is my first such post... 

I often end up reading every single issue of Delta Sky Magazine during some 60,000-plus miles I annually fly with the airline (I will have to write about my rapid ascent in Delta's Medallion Program and my obsession with the MQM someday). My favorite column is "Bag" where they reveal what various celebrities or successful entrepreneurs carry in their bag/suitcase. I happen to be on the road at the moment and decided to share what's in my bag:

My iPad has completely replaced my laptop since many years ago. The Belkin bluetooth keyboard/case makes it possible for me to do some heavy duty work on this iPad. I recently started carrying my Kindle again and am amazed how easy it is to read on it. I also started reading the addictive Murakami and brought a physical copy just in case. Finally, the leather tray helps me not to leave any valuables behind when I check in and out of different places. 

A scarf and UGG's wool sleepers keep me warm as the weather begins to cool down.

A concert attire and pair of black shoes are the must when traveling for concerts. 

I don't usually carry this much food with me. Granola mix and mixed nuts are easy easy to travel with. Apples supplement some much needed vitamins (I picked up several more from Atlanta's Delta Skyclub lounge). This time I also brought couple of Shin Noodle Bowl and a water boiler!

Things I forgot to bring: Starbucks VIA packs, a tumbler, a water bottle, and a pair of sneakers...

Next time, I will post a blog entitled "What's in Your Clarinet Case?" 

 

Krehl Clarinet Quintet with LSQ in TN

A few weeks ago, I was very fortunate to host and accompany the Larchmere String Quartet, currently quartet-in-residence at the University of Evansville, IN, in their concert tour in Tennessee. Back in September, we started working on the very little known Clarinet Quintet (1902) by Stephan Krehl (1864-1924). The week I spent with LSQ gave us more time to learn the piece well enough to give some of our first public performances together.

Soon after LSQ arrived at my home in Cookeville (and finished many bottles of wine), we headed to Harrogate, a tri-state town located in northeast Tennessee. We spent a whole day there still refreshing our vague memories (if we had any) of the music and getting ready to perform Krehl for the first time that evening at Lincoln Memorial University. After the LSQ gave a fantastic performance of quartets by Haydn and Brahms, we gave our TN premiere of Krehl's Quintet. Besides being surprised at various surprising tempo changes and harmonic surprises (lots of surprises), we all agreed that the piece has some really beautiful moments and great potential. 

After our first concert at Lincoln Memorial University

Harrogate has some beautiful scenery.

LSQ is busy getting their food before it's all gone.

The next day was spent in Nashville where we made a stop at WPLN (Nashville NPR Affiliate) Studio to play for a live interview and broadcast for their Classical 90.1. LSQ gave another very exciting performance of the first movement from Brahms String Quartet, Op. 51/1, and we played the Lento movement from Krehl's Quintet. 

At WPLN Studio C, Nashville, TN

Our final concert together in TN was scheduled at Tennessee Tech University where I teach. The LSQ gave their Center Stage Presentation in the morning, pouring a great deal of insights and inspiration for our music students. We had a relaxing afternoon strolling around the downtown Cookeville. The turnout for our evening Center Stage Recital was terrific, and I tremendously enjoyed playing Krehl again with the LSQ. I truly appreciate the LSQ's courage and willingness to work with me in giving a new life to this rather obscure work. I truly look forward to our number of upcoming performances together as well as a recording session for Naxos, featuring the quintet and Krehl only string quartet. Please stay tuned for our exciting upcoming projects!

LSQ in Cookeville

Everyone Has the First Time

Getting ready for the big solo!

Getting ready for the big solo!

Every once in a while, we all get to enjoy some special first-time moments. My past couple weekends were spent rehearsing and performing with the Oak Ridge Symphony in Oak Ridge, TN. The town, located just northwest of Knoxville, is well known for being a key location for the Manhattan Project during World War II. I have performed a number of times in their Chamber Music Series, and each time I was struck by its highly educated audience members and their great interest in classical music. It was a pleasure meeting some familiar faces and play some great music with local musicians there. So here are some first-time experiences for me:

  • Playing one of the greatest orchestral clarinet solo parts: Kodaly's Dances of Galánta
  • Playing on a new mouthpiece in a public performance for the first time in six years  (I've been using my previous mouthpiece for all occasions. This time, I tried my new Vandoren M30D and really loved it!)
  • My awesome wife accompanied me for the trip to the concert, so we got to spend some relaxing time together in Oak Ridge and Knoxville for the first time!