Moores School of Music Presents Music for Food

MORTALITY IN THE SUBLIME A CONCERT TO BENEFIT THE FOOD PANTRY OF EMERGENCY AID COALITION Korean-American cellist Eunghee Cho was awarded Second Prize and the special award for Outstanding Chinese New Piece Performance at the Schoenfeld International String Competition (China). He also earned top prizes at the Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition (USA), Gustav Mahler Prize Cello Competition (Czech Republic), and AEMC International Chamber Music Competition (Italy). He has appeared as soloist with ensembles around the country and formerly held Principal Cello positions with Atlantic Symphony Orchestra and Boston Festival Orchestra. Eunghee has collaborated in performances with artists such as Midori Goto, Inon Barnatan, David Shifrin, Elton John, Maeve Gilchrist, Keith Murphy, Alec Benjamin, François Salque, and with members of the Borromeo String Quartet, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Calder String Quartet, A Far Cry, and Aaron Diehl Trio.

As a passionate adventurer of contemporary music, he has collaborated directly with composers in performances of their works including with Frank Ticheli, José Elizondo, Andrew Norman, Julia Adolphe, David Froom, Michael Gandolfi, and Gabriela Lena Frank. Eunghee’s own arrangements have been commissioned and premiered by Sphinx Organization, New England Conservatory’s Cello Choir, Holes in the Floor, Rasa String Quartet, Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, Mellon Music Festival, and Music for Food.

Eunghee teaches on the faculty of University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, and he serves as the Founder and Artistic Director of Mellon Music Festival in Davis, CA as well as the Houston Chapter of Music for Food.

Eunghee received his B.M. from University of Southern California and subsequently completed M.M. and D.M.A. degrees at New England Conservatory under the tutelage of Laurence Lesser and Paul Katz.

Miranda Hollingsworth is a violinist based in Houston, Texas and studies at the Moores School of Music under Dr. Kirsten Yon. In addition to Dr. Yon, Ms. Hollingsworth’s greatest influences and mentors include Timothy Hester and Dr. Rob Smith. In the Summer of 2022, Ms. Hollingsworth was invited to be a Fellowship Artist under the direction of violist Steven Dann as well as a Company Member at Music By the Sea Canada. As a founding member of the Iris Trio she was named a 2020 Emerging Artist at the Mimir Chamber Music Festival, was awarded second prize in the 2020 Enkor Chamber Music Competition and was a semifinalist in the 2020 Coltman Chamber Music Competition. As a soloist, Ms. Hollingsworth has won the grand prize in the Strings Division and the Audience Choice Award at the 2021 Moores School of Music Concerto Competition, performed with the Houston Civic Symphony, and was named a 2017 Houston Young Artist.

As an advocate and enthusiast for contemporary music, Ms. Hollingsworth was the 2021-2022 violinist of the Aura Contemporary Ensemble under the direction of Dr. Rob Smith. She also appeared as a guest artist at the 2019 Lone Star Music Festival to perform Unmasking Presence, a work dedicated to the Iris Trio by composer Kyle Rivera. As a member of the Aura Contemporary Ensemble, she had the opportunity to work with composers Lowell Liebermann, Regis Campo, and Jack Frerer. In 2020, Ms. Hollingsworth had the opportunity to premier J. E. Hernandez’s “Sheer” for the Moores Music in the City Program “In Flanders Field”.

Ms. Hollingsworth has had the opportunity to play in masterclasses with Kristof Barati, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the Aizuri Quartet, the Formosa Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, the Faure Quartet, the Modigliani String Quartet, and the Jupiter String Quartet. In her free time, Miranda enjoys baking, exploring different workouts, and sight reading her favorite chamber music works with friends.

Amia Langer, soprano, is a current Masters of Music student at the University of Houston studying with Melanie Sonnenberg. Previous roles include Berta (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Frasquita(cover)(Carmen) with the Janiec Opera Company at Brevard Music Center, Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare), Anne (A Little Night Music) with Moores Opera Center, scenes as Despina (cover)(Così fan tutte), Spirit (Cendrillon), and scenes as Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro) with Westminster Opera Theatre. Past awards include Audience Choice Award (2022 Houston Gilbert and Sullivan Society Competition), and Westminster Choir College Voice Awards (Second Place). She has been a young artist with the Janiec Opera Company at Brevard Music Center, and with the Houston Grand Opera Young Artist Vocal Academy. Amia is a versatile artist with a background as a classically trained dancer, and has also trained in aerial arts.

Violinist Dr. Mann-Wen Lo performs extensively throughout the world in some of the most prestigious venues as a soloist and chamber musician. Lo has been a recurring artist in performances at Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Walt Disney Hall, among others. Featured on radio and TV broadcasts in the United States, Taiwan, Japan, and France, Lo has gained recognition at numerous competitions and awards. Most recently, her recording with the Mana Music Quartet featuring music of Queen Liliʻuokalani was awarded Instrumental Album of the Year at the 2021 Na Hoku Hanohano Award.

Chamber music is at the core of Lo’s musical passion. She has collaborated in concerts with members of worldrenowned string quartets such as the Juilliard String Quartet, the Cleveland Quartet, Quatuor Ysaÿe, and the Takacs Quartet, among others. In addition, she has performed with artists such as Glenn Dicterow, Peter Frankl, Roger Tapping, David Shifrin, Margaret Betjer, and Andrew Shulman. Lo has been invited as a guest artist to concert series such as Camera Lucida in San Diego, Sunset MusicFest, Le Salon de Musiques, the Castleton Chamber Players and the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles. Her festival appearances include Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Saito Kinen Festival (now Seiji Ozawa Festival), ANA Music Week, Hawaii International Music Festival, Hawaii Chamber Music Festival and Rencontres Franco Américaines de Musique Chambre.

In addition to teaching as a violin faculty at the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston, she is also a recurring faculty at the Deutsch-Polnische Festival für junge Musiker in Bremen.

Sam Pedersen was appointed to the Houston Symphony viola section in April 2022. Prior to joining, he was a member of the New World Symphony and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. Other engagements have been with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Grant Park Music Festival, Houston Grand Opera, and New York Philharmonic as a Global Academy fellow.

In addition to spending one summer as an orchestral fellow, Pedersen was a member of the New Fromm Players for two years at the Tanglewood Music Center. It was there that he dedicated time to the preparation and performance of contemporary repertoire, working alongside leading composers in the field. Highlights include the U.S. Premiere of Julian Anderson’s Third String Quartet as well as the World Premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’ Magic Box, for String Quartet and Percussion Quartet. His chamber music studies include mentors such as Norman Fischer, Andrew Jennings, Dawn Upshaw, and members of the Juilliard, Brentano and Pacifica quartets. Previous summers have been spent performing at the Madeline Island, National Repertory Orchestra, and Bowdoin music festivals.

Pedersen was raised in Batavia, IL. He holds a master’s degree from Rice University and a bachelor’s degree from DePaul University. Principal teachers include Ivo van der Werff and Rami Solomonow, with additional instruction from Lawrence Neuman and Joan DerHovsepian. Outside of the orchestra, Pedersen enjoys cycling, frisbee, and spending time with his brother, Andrew, member of the Houston Symphony double bass section.

Gavin Reed, Professor of Horn at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, is a sought-after freelance artist in Houston. In 2005, he began appearing with all of the city’s major orchestral ensembles including Houston Ballet, Houston Grand Opera, and Houston Symphony Orchestra. He is a member of ROCO and its offshoot, ROCO Brass Quintet. He has appeared with the orchestras of Tallahassee, San Antonio, Jacksonville, North Carolina (Raleigh), Milwaukee, and Atlanta. In 2008, he appeared with Canadian Brass in its double brass quintet tour entitled “Legends”. In recent summers, he has performed with the Grant Park Music Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, and is Co-Principal horn of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz CA. He has been a featured artist in ROCO's "Unchambered" chamber music series and has been a guest artist of Musiqa. He has appeared in dozens of radio broadcasts on American Public Media’s Performance Today. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Florida State University where he was a student of Michelle Stebleton. He received his Master's Degree from Northwestern University where he studied with Gail Williams and William Barnewitz.

An eclectic musician, pianist Brian Suits has made a career primarily as accompanist and chamber musician, and has a broad knowledge of the repertoire both of instrumentalists and singers. He is a skilled improviser as well, and feels at home in a great variety of styles. Suits is also an occasional composer, conductor, and arranger.

Among his recordings are a solo piano CD of jazz-flavored original works, and CDs with violinist Kyung Sun Lee and tenor Robert Swensen. Suits composed his 2019 Piano Trio for the Bayou City Trio, a group which he founded along with violinist Chavdar Parashkevov and cellist Louis-Marie Fardet. Other compositions include concerti, chamber works, and short piano pieces. Arrangements include orchestrations for more than a dozen Korean films, including 2006 Cannes Festival favorite The Host, which was directed by 2020 Academy Award winner Bong Joon-Ho (for Parasite). Suits has conducted the French Chamber Orchestra Albéric Magnard, the Gonzaga Symphony, Nino Rota’s Italian Straw Hat at the University of Houston, and several orchestras in Korea.

He taught at the Yale School of Music from 1990-2002, and currently teaches at the University of Houston as

Professor of Accompanying and Chamber Music, as well as art song coach and professor of lyric diction. In summers he plays at both the University of Houston’s Texas Music Festival, and the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. He has also been involved with the Aspen, Great Mountains, and Banff Music Festivals. His BM is from the University of Texas at Austin, and his MM is from the University of Southern California. His teachers have included Brooks Smith (the last of violinist Jascha Heifetz’s collaborators), David Renner, Jean Barr, and Donald Grantham.

Mitchell Wright is a Houston based cellist currently in undergraduate study for cello performance at the Moores School of Music. He previously studied with Vagram Sarajian, Estelle Choi of the Calidore Quartet, and is currently under the teaching of Eunghee Cho. Mitchell frequently collaborates with composers and musicians to perform new works, having premiered Misook Kim’s Danza II, seed/quiescence by Megan DiGeorgio for solo cello and performed J. E. Hernandez’s SHEER in a project sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. As part of the Iris piano trio he was awarded Second Prize in the 2020 ENKOR International Music Competition for performance by a chamber ensemble and was a featured performer in the 2019 Contemporary Music Festival at Cy-Fair College. He has received masterclasses from such performers as Alexander Rudin, Deborah Pae, the Formosa Quartet, the Aizuri Quartet, and the Modigliani Quartet.