Sonic Alchemy Mina Gajić, YuEun Kim, Coleman Itzkoff

• Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946):
• 1 Vasks: Balta Ainava (White Scenery) 08:27
• Arvo Pärt (b. 1935):
• 2 Pärt: Fratres 11:38
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791):
• 3 Mozart: Fantasia in D minor, K. 397 06:00
• Arvo Pärt:
• 4 Pärt: Mozart-Adagio (after Sonata K. 280) 06:33
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
• 5 Mozart: Fantasia in C minor, K. 475 12:13
• Pēteris Vasks:
• 6 Vasks: Castillo Interior (Interior Castle) 13:07
• Arvo Pärt:
• 7 Pärt: Spiegel im Spiegel 10:24
• Total Runtime 01:08:22

Info for Sonic Alchemy

How do we even measure time?

It is sometimes said that time is as old as humankind, but of course it isn’t. It’s just something we created out of a need for... what exactly? Earliest known evidence suggests we were measuring time already 5000 years ago. That way we could create predictability, for example concerning planting and harvesting. From there on we could more easily schedule and organize, which then helped us building a more sustainable life. When we had found a mutual understanding of what we would call time then other systems could be developed, kind of like a third-party software. Music notation works as a fine example.

Today our life is synchronized “to the beat.” Not only is every single footstep kept track of by our telephones or every breath by our smart wrist watches – even our thoughts are as good as monitored as we scroll casually through advertisements on social media. Without us even realizing, the idea of time and synchronicity is apparently encrypted so deep in our consciousness that the thought of viewing the world without it is beyond our comprehension. That doesn’t change the fact that time as we understand it has not always been the same. Our ideas on time have changed throughout the centuries and will most probably continue to do so. The works on Sonic Alchemy are of composers who offer a new perspective on how we can perceive time, each in their own way. (Páll Ragnar Pálsson)

“Playing in exquisitely perfect consonance and with quiet elegance violinist Yuen Kim, pianist Mina Gajić, and cellist Coleman Itzkoff bring out the haunting quality of Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks’ Balta Ainava (White Scenery) and Castillo Interior (Interior Castle) and the minimalist meditative serenity of Mozart-Adagio and Fratres, and the restlessness of Spiegel im Spiegel by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, in an album that combines the discipline of Mozart’s Classical chamber music and the compositional daring and Nordic coolness of Pēteris Vasks and Arvo Pärt. Outstanding!” (Rafael DeAcha, All About The Arts)

YuEun Kim, violin
Coleman Itzkoff, cello
Mina Gajic, piano

YuEun Kim
Born in Seoul, Korea in 1988, the violinist YuEun Kim is forging a significant international career. While performing extensively, Ms. Kim has won top prizes at the Korean Times Music Competition, Kumho Art Hall Recital Series Competition, Sungjung Competition, Music Education News Concours, and the Seoul High Schools Chamber Music Competition. Ms. Kim also received Second Prize at Joong Ang Music Concours in 2010. She was featured as a soloist with the SNU Philharmonic Orchestra (Seoul) in 2009, as well as the Incheon Philharmonic Orchestra in 2012. At the start of her venture into the international music scene, she was selected to be a semi-finalist in the 2012 International Violin Competition Buenos Aires.

Ms. Kim has been a junior member of the Chamber Music Society of Kumho Art Hall since 2010, and she has concertized around the world, including a performance at the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. YuEun advocates for chamber music in a variety of settings, including smaller and more casual venues, where music has an especially intimate, powerful impact, such as The House Concert series and the Starlight Outreach Community Concerts, in her native Korea. She is also a founding member of the Zaffre String Quartet. Furthermore, Ms. Kim regularly participates in numerous music festivals, including Seoul Spring Festival-Fringe Festival, Seoul National University Chamber Music Festival, Costa Rica International Music Festival of Music4one, and Klangspuren Festival in Austria. YuEun Kim is also a dedicated painter and photographer, whose living space is a virtual darkroom, her various forms of artistic expression deepening each other.

Having earned her Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in violin performance from the prestigious Seoul National University, Ms. Kim is presently working towards her Artist Diploma, as a Starling Fellow on full scholarship at the USC-Thornton School of Music, under the tutelage of world-renowned violinist Midori Goto.

Since moving to Los Angeles in the fall of 2013, Ms Kim has been actively performing in the area, including recitals at the Pasadena City College, Pasadena Presbyterian Church, Palos Verdes Library, and the Nixon Presidential Library. She has won first place in USC’s Solo Bach Competition and the Strings Concerto Competition, and was a semi-finalist at the China International Violin Competition and the Michael Hill International Violin Competition. Ms Kim’s forthcoming engagements include performing at Yellow Barn (Putney, VT), and appearing as a soloist with the USC Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Irvine in 2015. She has recently won the auditions for “Beverly Hills National Audition” and “Sundays Live at LACMA” (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), opening doors to numerous programs in the following years.

Mina Gajić
started her music career and education in Yugoslavia. She has performed as concerto soloist and recitalist in Italy, France, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Montenegro, China, Bolivia, and in the United States. As duo partner with violinist Zachary Carrettín, she has performed on four continents, focusing on a diverse repertory spanning the centuries and various styles—on historic period pianos in addition to modern concert instruments.

Her awards include first prize at the International Competition Città di Stresa, Italy; third prize at the Nikolai Rubinstein Competition in Paris; first prize at the Competition of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic Competition of Serbia for five consecutive years; first prize at the Stanković Competition in Belgrade with special distinction for collaborative artistry, as well as semi-finalist at the Shanghai International Piano Competition.

Dr. Gajić holds degrees from the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, where she was awarded the prestigious Charles Ross fellowship, and was a winner of the Carl and Lillian Illig Scholarship, and the Diane Sacks Prize. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Notable performances have included critically-acclaimed period instrument renditions of works by Chopin, Brahms, Britten, Ives, Berg, Antheil, and Bartók. Her doctoral dissertation and subsequent research on the work of Yugoslav composer Josip Slavenski connect Balkan folkloric traditions and approaches to twentieth century music between the two World Wars. Dr. Gajić has held teaching positions at Sam Houston State University School of Music, the University of St. Thomas Music Preparatory School, and Rocky Ridge Music Center Summer Academy.

She records and performs on three immaculate historic grand pianos:
Érard (Paris, 1835),
Pleyel (Paris, 1870),
Érard (Paris, 1895). These pianos were restored by Frits Janmaat at Maison Érard in Amsterdam.

Her performances of Brahms and Schumann (Érard, 1895) can be heard on the critically-acclaimed audio book, Escapement, by award-winning author Kristen Wolf. Additionally, Gajić and Carrettín's recording of Schubert sonatas on historical instruments was released in March, 2020 and became a Top 10 on Billboard Charts "Traditional Classical" the following month. Her recording of Balkan Dances & Tango Nuevo is set for release in 2021 on the Sono Luminus label.

Dr. Gajić is the founder and Artistic Director of Boulder International Chamber Music Competition—Art of Duo. In 2014 she became Director of Education at Boulder Bach Festival. After transforming BBF's education, community engagement, and fellowship artist programs she became Artistic and Executive Director, making her the first woman and immigrant artistic leader of the Boulder Bach Festival.

Coleman Itzkoff
Hailed by Alex Ross in The New Yorker for his “flawless technique and keen musicality,” cellist Coleman Itzkoff enjoys a diverse career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator. Recent season highlights include solo performances with the Houston Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, American Youth Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and chamber music performances at Caramoor, YellowBarn, Union College, and Marlboro Music Festival. Coleman demonstrates versatility and command of a wide variety of musical styles, equally comfortable with Renaissance and Baroque music played on period instruments as he is with the eclectic and evermore technically challenging music of today.

A passionate proponent of new music and interdisciplinary collaboration, Coleman Itzkoff has premiered over 100 contemporary works in the last five years, working closely with some of the great composers of today, including Jörg Widmann, Brett Dean, Tan Dun, Vivian Fung, Steven Mackey, and Matthew Aucoin, to name a few. He is a founding member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), an ensemble of seventeen singers, dancers, and instrumentalists whose focus is on creating and producing a body of discipline-colliding work combining traditional and experimental artistic processes. With that group, Itzkoff will serve as co-artistic director of the Ojai Festival in 2022 and present work at the American Repertory Theater, Union College, Harvard University, National Sawdust, and elsewhere. Through and beyond his work with AMOC, Coleman has begun pushing into the areas of dancing and acting, most notably in his roles in choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith’s dance-theater pieces ‘Lost Mountain’ and ‘Broken Theatre’, the latter of which will be presented as a feature-length film in festivals around the world (to be announced shortly). Upcoming performances of this nature also include the AMOC productions of ‘The No One’s Rose’ and ‘Waiting’, as well as a tour of the Southern United States of ‘Broken Theatre’.

Chamber Music is at the heart of Coleman’s musical life, beginning early on with weekly quartet readings with his parents, both professional violinists themselves. At the age of 10, Coleman began attending the Greenwood Music Camp where he began playing with other musicians of his generation and where his love of chamber music deepened. Since that time, he has attended numerous summer music festivals including Aspen Music Festival and School, the International Heifetz Institute, La Jolla SummerFest, YellowBarn, Music@Menlo, and Marlboro Music Festival. He has collaborated in chamber music with such musicians as violinists Pamela Frank, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Cho-Liang Lin, and Glenn Dicterow; soprano Lucy Shelton; cellists David Finckel and Johannes Moser; violist Roger Tapping; and pianists Gil Kalish and Peter Frankl.

Central to Mr. Itzkoff’s career in music is his dedication to community outreach and education. Wherever in the country he may performing, Coleman always makes a point of engaging in the broader community to bring music to the people, whether it be in schools, senior centers and nursing homes, or hospitals. He has received several grants and awards for these purposes, including the Sviatoslav Richter Grant for Music Outreach from Rice University, the Roman Goronok Fellowship from the 2016 Irving Klein Competition, and, in 2015, the Cleveland Clinic Arts and Medicine Award for his engaging talks and accessible performances for clinic patients. Additionally, Coleman is a devoted and dynamic educator of young musicians, and has taught and given masterclasses across the US at such institutions as the International Heifetz Institute, the Lev Aronson Cello Festival, Virginia Tech’s Moss Arts Center, NYU, and Harvard University. Coleman has continued this work in the time of COVID, partnering with PMHU’s ‘Vital Sounds Partnership Grants’ to bring live, one-on-one performances to hospital patients across the country, from Los Angeles to Boston.

Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Coleman Itzkoff was born in 1992 into a musical family and began playing cello at the age of 4. He holds a BM from Rice University and his Master’s Degree from the Thornton School of Music at USC where he studied under the tutelage of Ralph Kirshbaum. Currently, he is enrolled in The Juilliard School’s prestigious Artist Diploma program studying with Timothy Eddy, Richard Aaron, and baroque cello with Phoebe Carrai. He performs on a 1730 Gennaro Gagliano Cello, generously loaned to him by the Amatius Foundation of Austin, TX.

Booklet for Sonic Alchemy