Eunice Koh - cello

A versatile and active cellist of the musical scene, Eunice Koh believes in sharing memorable and diverse experiences with a global audience through the curation of engaging programmes and cross-cultural collaborations. She is also passionate about sharing her experiences through teaching and learning with each student’s musical growth. Maintaining intensive chamber music activities and performing with different musical genres locally and internationally, are examples of her willingness to adapt and grow.

Eunice is a firm believer of exploring various styles and genres of performing. She regularly performs and curates’ solo and chamber programmes. Eunice was invited to perform in a recital at the South Carolina Chamber Music Festival, and premiered a newly commissioned work, Festivals: from Sounds of Singapore by Chee-Hang See. She is an avid advocate for world music and is constantly researching on performance practices of different cultures. Some Strings Attached, a chamber ensemble collectively founded by Eunice and four other musicians, represents her passion for chamber music making and connecting with her audiences. Eunice is also part of two Singapore based ensembles – Stringwerkz and Open Score Project. Stringwerkz is an award-winning Chinese Chamber Quintet comprising of four Erhu musicians and a cellist. They had organised and performed recitals in Singapore and two recitals in Hamline University, Minnesota in 2018 and 2019. Apart from recitals, Stringwerkz often curate community performances, school workshops, and performing in hospitals. Open Score Project is a multi-ethnic syncretic ensemble that was invited to perform in Hanoi and Shanghai for Singapore Festival and Singapore Day respectively. They also realised a community engaging project titled Arts in Your Neighbourhood, by building a physical engaging platform to engage audiences of all ages in the heartlands of Singapore. She is also a cellist that actively collaborates with other art disciplines such as, dance, theatre, poetry and visual arts.

Eunice Koh graduated from University of South Carolina (DMA), Southern Illinois University (MM), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts – Royal College of Music (Bachelor of Music with Honours). Her teachers include Professors Zhao Yu Er, Chen Yang Guang, Amanda Truelove, Eric Lenz, and Claire Bryant.

Her experience with orchestral performing as section and principal cellist include, Southern Illinois Symphony Orchestra, University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra, South Carolina Philharmonic, Aiken Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Lyric Opera, Metropolitan Festival Orchestra, Singapore Youth Chinese Orchestra, The Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra of the Music Makers, Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra, and Re: mix.

    15 Agbadza Bliss

  • Agbadza Bliss

    Kwaku Boakye-Frempong

    Kwaku Boakye-Frempong is a 29-year-old composer with a strong interest in composing pieces that reflect history, culture, and the environment. He is currently the resident composer and arranger of the Accra Chamber Orchestra in Accra, Ghana and the music director of Afro Classical Nights, Ghana’s leading classical music show.

    Agbadza is a dance that is often performed by the Ewe tribe in the Eastern part of Ghana called the Volta Region. It is also common amongst the Southern part of Togo. It evolved from the times of war into a very popular recreational dance during festivals and celebratory events peculiar to the Ewe people. This piece entitled “Agbadza Bliss” makes use of rhythmic phrases from instruments used in Agbadza ensemble and the tone of the language spoken by the Ewes. Agbadza Bliss seeks to invoke the atmosphere of a young Ewe couple being joined together in a marriage.

    • 13 DISPENSER OF JUSTICE

  • DISPENSER OF JUSTICE

    Erik Branch

    Erik Branch is a native of New York City, and received a BA and MA in Music (Composition) from Hunter College. He lives near Orlando, Florida, where he is active as a pianist, musical director, composer/arranger, operatic tenor, and actor on stage and screen.

    The title comes from the music's pitch material being derived from the raga Bhavani, and that Bhavani is also a name of the Hindu goddess Durga, the source of creative energy, a mother-figure who provides for her followers and dispenses justice against the asuras (demonic entities.)

    • 3 IT'S GONNA GET YOU

  • IT'S GONNA GET YOU

    Claire Brown

    Claire Brown (b. 2006) is a composer and oboist from Northern Virginia currently based in State College, PA. Her original compositions include works for soloists, chamber ensemble, large ensemble, and electronic media, and has many upcoming performances of her pieces. Currently, Claire is attending Penn State where she studies oboe with Dr. Andreas Oeste and composition with Dr. Baljinder Sekhon.

    IT’S GONNA GET YOU highlights the various stylistic and dynamic techniques of the cello. Evoking a sense of uneasiness and paranoia, it mimics the feeling of being chased by an unknown being, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there. This urgency is conveyed by the notes, style, and dynamics.

    • 1 Effulgence from the Abyssal Realm

  • Effulgence from the Abyssal Realm

    SJR Caldwell

    Composer SJR Caldwell is fascinated with writing music which gives audiences immersive experiences. Inspired by popular avant-garde movements, Caldwell has sought to combine the accessible and the unfamiliar. Whether for full orchestra, chamber ensemble, soloist, electronics, or anything in between, Caldwell’s music welcomes performer engagement and repeated listening.

    The music, art, and poetry for this piece are meant to evoke a sense of otherworldly discovery. Questions of belonging and existential wonder are fundamental engines of the human experience—but they also resist any clear resolution—and are thus represented by the cello’s paradoxically idiomatic and unconventional gestures.

    • 9 A Jasmine for Johann

  • A Jasmine for Johann

    Ross James Carey

    Ross James Carey is a foreign professor at Sias University, Henan, China. From Aotearoa/New Zealand, his work combines quotation and cross-genre elements whilst looking at questions of place and identity. Recent works include Pendopo Dreaming for wind quintet, and a song cycle Chang’an Dreaming (poems by Margaret T. South).

    ‘A Jasmine for Johann’ combines the well-known traditional Chinese melody ‘Jasmine Flower’ with J.S.Bach’s Prelude from the Cello Suite no. 1 in G Major to create a brief confluence (and flowering) of eras and cultures. Composed in April 2024 in Xinzheng, Henan province, China for Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame with Eunice Koh.

    • 14 Frayed

  • Frayed

    Matthew Elderton-Lewis

    Born in Essex, United Kingdom Matthew Elderton-Lewis (b. 2001) is a composer whose style has been described as idiosyncratic and memorably melodic. He began gaining recognition after being awarded the ‘MMus Prize for Outstanding Achievement’ for his postgraduate degree.

    Over the past six months, I’ve focused on refining my string writing. Through this deep dive, pizzicato glissandos in the higher register have struck me as being particularly intersting. Frayed is a brief piece that seeks to depict the unravelling of a rope and its inevitable snapping point.

    • 12 Planted

  • Planted

    Brian Ellis

    Brian Ellis is a creative coder, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. His artistic drive lies in using code to democratize creative expression. He founded the Brooklyn Motion Capture Dance Ensemble to explore this concept through the medium of dance, writes participatory chamber music to explore it through concert music settings.

    Planted music is grounded in aural sensibilities and audible explorations. This work seeks to explore this concept within the world of luscious drones, exploratory extended technique, and a few beautiful melodies.

    • 11 Song of the Moonlit Waters

  • Song of the Moonlit Waters

    Ethan Hsu

    Ethan Hsu is a 15-year old composer hailing from Philadelphia, PA. His recent participation in Juilliard Summer Composition allowed him to meet with industry-leading composers and have his music performed by members of Ensemble Connect and Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center. His music has performed by local schools, performers, and Philadelphia Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra.

    "Song of the Moonlit Waters" is a connection to my heritage, and refers to a scene in Bangkok, Thailand where I stood over the river's edge and watched boats pass along during the evening. Taking inspiration from my Asian ancestry, this music is inspired by Chinese and Thai folksong.

    • 8 A Petite Raga for Mid-Morning

  • A Petite Raga for Mid-Morning

    Dr. Michael Knopf

    Composer Dr. Michael Knopf has pursued eclecticism as his musical fingerprint in new music that often embraces world historical and cultural stylisms and elements. With many works for guitar and many pieces for choir, solo cello, ensembles, and orchestra, his music reveals a nuanced, global approach to style, genre and expression.

    A Petite Raga for Mid-Morning for solo cello draws light inspiration from the music of India. Using the mixolydian scale, (part of the Raga “Khamaj”), the cello provides its own rhythmic accompaniment to vocal-like melody, traditional cello double stops, and touches of musical subtlety.

    • 2 Yang-Chou Eccentrix

  • Yang-Chou Eccentrix

    Michael Kosch

    Michael Kosch studied music composition with Dennis Kam at the University of Miami, and with Ben Johnston, Salvatore Martirano, and Morgan Powell at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He has written operas, orchestral works, choral and chamber music, and songs. Many of his recent compositions draw inspiration from visual art.

    YANG-CHOU ECCENTRIX was sparked by the works of a late seventeenth/early eighteenth-century group of Chinese painters who renounced conventions of their art in pursuit of a fresh, spontaneous, untutored style. Shunning the brush, the Eccentrics applied ink and color with their fingers and the side of the hand, inscribing frayed, irregular lines with an elongated finger nail. They rendered their subjects with the sparsest of marks, valuing awkward perspective and "slapdash" modeling. Despite severe criticism from traditionalists, the Eccentrics' paintings were soon sought after by wealthy patrons and discerning collectors.

    • 4 Another Shade of Blue(s)

  • Another Shade of Blue(s)

    Michael Todd Kovell

    Michael Todd Kovell has had music performed in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He has a B.Mus. from the Oberlin Conservatory, an M.Mus. from the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, and studied composition at the Schoenberg House in Austria.

    "Another Shade of Blue(s)" is a study in blues for solo cello.

    • 7 Chilblains

  • Chilblains

    Alexander Lea

    Alexander Lea is a music graduate from the University Oxford.

    The burning sensation of chilblains occurs after exposure to a dramatic change in temperature. This work explores extreme contrasts of the cello, switching between low, brittle attacks on the low C string and shrill, icy sounds of harmonics, woven together into a groove which ebbs and flows throughout.

    • 6 Dubito, ergo cogito

  • Dubito, ergo cogito.

    Gabriel L. Newvine

    Described as engaging, emotional, and thought-provoking, Gabriel L. Newvine’s (b. 2000) (He/They) music explores the personal experiences and intricacies of living through theatrical narratives and kaleidoscopic sound. Gabe’s works have been performed domestically and abroad, by ensembles and soloists such as Loadbang, CAMP, VICE quartet, Lee Hinkle, Velvet Brown, and many more. Based in State College, PA, Gabe is currently pursuing a masters degree in composition and theory at Penn State with Dr. Baljinder Sekhon and Dr. Sarah Genevieve Burghart Rice.

    Dubito, ergo cogito. is a piece for solo cello. This piece plays with the discourse over the famous saying, “Cogito, ergo sum” by completely disregarding the whole point of the saying. In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s dubito or cogito, as long as you had fun along the way.

    • 5 Two Ways to Get Going

  • Two Ways to Get Going

    Clayton Trumbull

    Clayton Trumbull (b.2002) is a queer American composer, violist, and optimist from Saratoga Springs, NY. His music is cathartic, often incorporating his original poetry, empathetic and emotional presentation of struggle, contrast of comfort and discomfort through tonality, modality, and non-tonality, as well as his own passion for community and interpersonal connection. Clayton is currently studying at Pennsylvania State University with Baljinder Sekhon and Timothy Deighton after receiving his B.M. in Music Composition from the Eastman School of Music in May 2024. He has studied with Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Matthew Barber, Robert Morris, and George Taylor.

    I've always had a fascination with how folk tunes have been passed down from generations, connecting my heritage with how I perform, learn, and promote the folk music that is so deep in my bones. I've incorporated the free, ornamented Celtic folk-type figures in the first part of this music, and the second part is steeped in more academic styles with hints of pentatonics, throughout moving upwards.

    • 10 Fantasia in Huzam

  • Fantasia in Huzam

    Anna Vriend

    Anna Vriend is a composer based in the UK. She has written music for a broad range of instruments including recorders, flute, bass clarinet, reed quintet, bowed and plucked string instruments, reed organ, organ, piano and choir. She won third prize in the VIII International Composition Competition Opus Ignotum. Her works for bass clarinet solo and reed quintet respectively have been published by Alea Publishing. Several of her pieces for various instruments have been performed on Fifteen Minutes of Fame recently.

    This piece, dedicated to Eunice Koh, is written in an Arabic mode called Huzam. The scale uses quarter tones, introducing new dimensions for western ears. Fortunately , these tones can be played on the cello. (Not all instruments can play quarter tones.)