Patrick Yim: One: New Music for Unaccompanied Violin

Patrick Yim

Praised for his “deeply expressive, finely nuanced play- ing” (The Strad Magazine), “dazzling technique and passionate interpretations” (The Whole Note), and “superb” performances (Fanfare Magazine), Honolulu-born violinist Patrick Yim made his solo debut with the Honolulu Symphony, and has performed chamber music with Juilliard, Emerson, St. Lawrence, Pacifica, and Ying Quartet members, and musicians from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Cleveland Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. He performed with the Cleveland Orchestra on tour in the USA and Europe, and at Carnegie Hall with the Emerson Quartet violinists. His recordings, including numerous world premieres, have been published by Albany, Naxos, Navona, Ravello, and Acis. A strong advocate of contemporary compositions, Yim has commissioned more than 50 works to date, including a substantial body of work for violin with non-Western instruments. In 2024, Yim performed the world premiere of Bamboo Grove, a new unaccompanied violin work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Zhou Long commissioned for him by the University of Notre Dame, at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. New Waves, which includes premiere recordings of works by Chen Yi, Zhou Long, and Qu Xiao-song, was published by Albany Records on December 23, 2023. He earned his BM and MM from the Cleveland Institute of Music and his DMA from Stony Brook University. His principal teachers were Philip Setzer, William Preucil, David Updegraff, Jennifer Frautschi, and Hagai Shaham. He previously taught at CIM, Hong Kong Baptist University, Interlochen, and Stony Brook. Yim is Assistant Professor of Violin in the Department of Music, Faculty Fellow at the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, and Faculty Fellow at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Ilari Kaila

Ilari Kaila is a Finnish-American composer whose music has been described with words such as “intriguing”, “haunting”, “soulful” (The New York Times), “nearly unbearable beauty... A modern masterpiece” (The WholeNote), “melodically euphoric” (Rondo Classic), “I kept coming back to it... the music is so beautiful, and I want to experience it again and again” (Orchestergraben), and “haunting” (The New Yorker). His work has been presented, among others, at a MATA Festival composer portrait recital; as the Composer-in-Residence of the Chelsea Music Festival in New York and Taipei; the Metropolis Festival in Australia; and the Banff Centre Summer Arts Festival in Canada. Artists he has worked with include the Escher String Quartet, Uusinta Ensemble, Olli Mustonen, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Avanti Chamber Orchestra, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. An album of Kaila’s chamber music by the Aizuri Quartet and pianist Adrienne Kim was released on the Innova Recordings label in 2020.

Juri Seo

Juri Seo is a Korean-American composer and pianist. She merges many of the fascinating aspects of music from the past century—in particular its expanded timbral palette and unorthodox approach to structure—with a deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and classical form. With its fast-changing tempi and dynamics, her music explores the serious and the humorous, the lyrical and the violent, the tranquil and the obsessive. She hopes to create music that loves, that makes a positive change in the world—however small—through the people who are willing to listen. Her composition honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress. She has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation, Barlow Endowment, the Goethe Institut, and Tanglewood. She holds a doctorate in music from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently Associate Professor of Music at Princeton University.

Takuma Itoh

Takuma Itoh spent his early childhood in Japan before moving to Northern California where he grew up. His music has been described as “brashly youthful and fresh” (The New York Times). Featured as one of “100 Composers Under 40” on NPR Music and WQXR, he has been the recipient of such awards and commissions as the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize, and six ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. Itoh’s music has been performed by the Albany Symphony, the Tucson Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, Symphony in C, the Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Shanghai Quartet, and the St. Lawrence Quartet. His works can be heard on Albany and Blue Griffin Records, and is published by Theodore Presser, Resolute Music, and Murphy Music Press. He holds degrees from Cornell University, University of Michigan, and Rice University. Since 2012, Itoh has been a faculty member at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Páll Ragnar Pálsson

Páll Ragnar Pálsson is an Icelandic composer. He holds a PhD in music from the Estonian Academy of the Arts (2014) and lives in Reykjavík. He has released two albums, Nostalgia and Atonement, in addition to having works published on various compilation discs. He has twice participated in the International Rostrum of Composers, both on behalf of Estonia (2013) as well as Iceland (2018), winning the first prize for the cello concerto Quake. Páll‘s works have been selected Composition of the Year twice by the Icelandic Music Awards. His first work for film, Quake (2022), a collaboration with Edvarð Egilsson, was nominated both for the Nordic Music Film Awards and Edda, the Icelandic Film Awards. Páll Ragnar has worked with soloists Martin Kuuskmann and Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir, conductors Daniel Bjarnason, Olari Elts, Ilan Volkov, Rumon Gamba and Risto Joost, and the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, BBC Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and NDR chamber orchestra.

Matthew Schreibeis

The music of Matthew Schreibeis, which spans orchestral, chamber, and vocal music and includes a series of works for traditional Korean instruments, represents a personal musical vision characterized by vivid color, imagination, and a clear sense of drama. His compositions have been performed by the Albany Symphony and David Alan Miller, New York New Music Ensemble, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, and ensemble mise-en, among others. His Albany Records portrait CD, Sandburg Songs, features soprano Tony Arnold, Zohn Collective, and conductor Tim Weiss. Among his many honors are the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; grants from Columbia University (Ditson Grant), American Composers Forum, Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and Hong Kong Research Grants Council; and residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Copland House, and Camargo Foundation in France. He has lectured and given masterclasses throughout North America, Asia, and Australia.

John Liberatore

John Liberatore is a composer, pianist, and one of the world’s few glass harmonica players. His music seeks poignancy through levity, ambiguity through transparency, and complexity within simple textures—“to feel pulled along at varying speeds in multiple directions, but always forward.” (Cleveland Classical)

Over the past several years, his music has received hundreds of performances in venues on five continents. He is the recipient of Fellowships from MacDowell (2020, 2017 NEA Fellow), Tanglewood, Yaddo, the Brush Creek Arts Foundation, the I-Park Artist’s Enclave, and the Millay Colony. Other notable distinctions include commis- sions from the Fromm Music Foundation and the Ameri- can Opera Initiative, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, and the Brian Israel Prize. Through a 2012 Presser Music Award, he studied in Tokyo with Jo Kondo—a mentorship that made an indelible impression on his music.

In 2015, Liberatore commissioned glass blowers G. Finkenbeiner Inc. for a new glass harmonica, becoming one of the few exponents of this rare instrument in contemporary music. So far, he has collaborated as a composer and performer with Roomful of Teeth, percussionist Daniel Druckman, soprano Jamie Jordan, and several others. In 2018, Albany Records released Line Drawings: Chamber Music of John Liberatore. This album features his recording debut on the glass harmonica (alongside Druckman and Jordan), as well as pieces for The Mivos Quartet, pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, Bent Frequency, and Duo Damiana. This collaboration with Zohn Collective marks his second portrait album. Other recordings of his work are available on Centaur, Innova, Ravello, and False Azure record labels.

He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (PhD, MM) and Syracuse University (BM, summa cum laude). In 2015 he joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame where he now serves as Associate Professor of Music Composition and Theory.