Composer Kay Rhie releases Cereus, a portrait album of chamber works featuring soprano Leela Subramaniam, Winsor Music and the Aperture Duo. Rhie's music draws on her experience as a South Korean born artist living in Los Angeles, responding to the lived environment in outward ways through text setting and thematic context, as well as inward impacts on her compositional process.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 51:30 | |||
| 01 | Cereus | Cereus | Winsor Music Trio, Gabriela Diaz, violin, Rane Moore, clarinet/bass clarinet, David Russell, cello | 13:15 |
I Hear the Sound of Trees |
||||
| Leela Subramaniam, soprano, Rachel Wolz, alto sax, Andreas Foivos Apostolou, piano | ||||
| 02 | I. After the dazzle of the day (Walt Whitman) | I. After the dazzle of the day (Walt Whitman) | 3:39 | |
| 03 | II. Reflective (A.R. Ammons) | II. Reflective (A.R. Ammons) | 0:44 | |
| 04 | III. Cascadilla Falls (A.R. Ammons) | III. Cascadilla Falls (A.R. Ammons) | 3:06 | |
| 05 | IV. Perfections (Walt Whitman) | IV. Perfections (Walt Whitman) | 1:45 | |
| 06 | V. Love Song (A.R. Ammons) | V. Love Song (A.R. Ammons) | 3:41 | |
...in the dreams of another... |
||||
| Aperture Duo | ||||
| 07 | I. After you | I. After you | 2:36 | |
| 08 | II. Circular | II. Circular | 2:19 | |
| 09 | III. ...in the dreams of another... | III. ...in the dreams of another... | 2:49 | |
| 10 | IV. Game | IV. Game | 1:55 | |
| 11 | V. If I don’t see you, I feel you | V. If I don’t see you, I feel you | 1:39 | |
Kay Rhie’s compositions pay special attention to musical behaviors, curating the interaction between instruments, phrase length, motivic contour, and other salient characteristics to reinforce larger aesthetic goals in her music. In this collection of chamber music with and without voice, Rhie’s decisions surrounding process and how the musical material develops are often embodiments of something essential to the expression of the piece itself. As a listener, one senses this cohesion in her music between micro detail and macro intention is something one senses as a listener even before investigating the nature of their link. This integration of local and large scale elements never obscures Rhie’s engaging material on a moment to moment level, and she cultivates this fine balance between compositional design and instinct expertly throughout the works on this recording.
Cereus (Night Blooms), performed by the Winsor Trio, is dedicated to her late father, In-young Rhie, who was an active writer in his native South Korea in the 60s through 80s before immigrating to the United States. In the last months of his life, Kay Rhie ruminated about how this creative part of her father’s life had been dormant since the family’s move, and fashioned the musical content of the piece around the idea of a flower that blossoms only at night, despite resistance. Disjunct, imitative gestures in the instruments of the trio that are separated by silence at the opening of the piece gradually become more extended, as arrivals in one line connect with sustained pitches in another, skittering lines coalesce and diverge, and fragments flower into fully formed phrases. The last several minutes of the piece diffuse its charged energy into a series of contemplative, peaceful exhalations.
The five part song cycle I Hear the Sound of Trees for voice, alto saxophone, and piano, sets a collection of poems by by Walt Whitman and A.R. Ammons that celebrate nature’s power to reconnect us with our inner quietude. The first three songs of the set travel through the smooth urbanity of “After the dazzle of the day” (Whitman), the wry humor of “Reflective” (Ammons), and the cascading, word-painted narrative of “Cascadilla Falls” (Ammons). In “Perfections" (Whitman), Leela Subramaniam's crystalline soprano covers wide leaps over the irregular percolation of oscillating figures in keyboard and saxophone. “Love Song” (Ammons) is the most introspective song in the set, capturing the beguiling mystery of nature’s enveloping embrace with ethereal vocal lines over gentle accompaniment.
…in the dreams of another… for violin and viola, performed by the Aperture Duo, grew from Rhie’s observations about interactions over Zoom. Inadvertent interruptions, clumsy apologies, and quick stops and starts abound on online communication platforms, especially early in the pandemic when many people were acclimating themselves to that format for the first time. The piece’s five movements each examine a different kind of dialogue between the two instruments: the motivic imitation of “After You,” the rounded contours in “Circular,” the jump-cut contrasts of dynamic, expression, and timbre of “Game,” and the truncated gestures of “If I don’t see you, I feel you.” The title movement is the emotional center of the work, scored for viola alone playing a mournful melody, revealing the alienation that lies beneath our awkward efforts at connection.
– Dan Lippel
Recorded at Evelyn & Mo Ostin Music Center
Recording producers: Sergey Parfenov, Jose Carrillo (for Cereus)
Sound engineer: Sergey Parfenov
Editing, mix and mastering: Sergey Parfenov
Cover Image: Photo by Hà Nguyen on Unsplash
Kay Rhie photo: Joy Cha
Design, layout & typography: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Proofreader: David S. Lefkowitz
“After the dazzle of day,” and “Perfection” from Walt Whitman’s poetry collection Leaves of Grass in the public domain.
“Reflective” © 1990 from The Really Short Poems of A.R. Ammons
“Cascadilla Falls,” and “Love Song (2)”. © 1986 from A.R. Ammons, The Selected Poems, Expanded Edition. Used by the kind permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Suite from Quake libretto by Amanda Hollander
Kay Rhie is a composer of contemporary classical music who often explores the issues of belonging and the science of acoustics. Currently Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at UCLA, she finds her experience of living in Los Angeles and previously in Ithaca, New York, as well as growing up in South Korea to be continuously influencing her voice as a composer. Her musical studies began in South Korea on the piano from the age of seven, and continued at the University of California at Los Angeles and Cornell University. Her composition teachers include Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, Paul Chihara, Ian Krouse, David Lefkowitz, John Harbison, Samuel Adler, Stephen Hartke, and Donald Crockett. She received her Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition from Cornell University in 2009.
Rhie was a recipient of the Charles Ives Fellowship given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008, which said her music has “vehemence and reticence,” where “intimacy and plainness co-exist.” She was awarded the Grand Prize for Student Compositions at the Ojai Music Festival in 2001. Residences have included the Aspen Music Festival (2003), the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East (2004), and Banff Centre for the Arts (2005). At the Tanglewood Music Center, she was the Otto Eckstein Composition Fellow and the winner of the Geffen-Solomon New Music Commission in 2007. From 2008-2009, she was a Rieman and Baketel Music Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University. The recently completed orchestral work, H’on, commissioned for the Los Angeles Philharmonic premiered in June 2025.
Her music has been performed at the London Festival of American Music, Banff Centre for the Arts, the Hear Now Festival, Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music, Tanglewood Music Center, Tongyeong International Music Festival, the Ars Nova Series in Korea, Composers Conference at Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and Berkeley Symphony Chamber Series. Performers include the BBC Singers, Ensemble TM+ (Paris), Ensemble X, In Mulieribus, the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, TIMF ensemble, Winsor Music, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Brightwork Newmusic Ensemble, Aperture Duo, New Thread Saxophone Quartet, and Opera UCLA.
http://www.kayrhie.comGabriela Díaz and Rane Moore are Co-Artistic Directors at Winsor Music, contributing significantly to its mission of fostering community through innovative chamber music. Gabriela, known for her dynamic performances, has brought her rich musical heritage to Winsor Music, enhancing its repertoire with her family’s traditional and contemporary pieces. Her work extends beyond performances, engaging in educational initiatives and community outreach to connect music with healing and social discourse. Rane Moore complements this with her versatile musicianship and dedication to new music, often collaborating in the creation and premiere of works that challenge and inspire. Together, they’ve helped Winsor Music become a beacon for diversity in music, offering scholarships, mentorship, and concerts that resonate with audiences across Boston, making the organization a hub for cultural and musical exchange.
Georgia native Gabriela Diaz began her musical training at the age of five, studying piano with her mother, and the next year, violin with her father. As a childhood cancer survivor, Gabriela is committed to sup- porting cancer research and treatment in her capacity as a musician. In 2004, Gabriela was a recipient of a grant from the Albert Schweitzer Foundation, an award that enabled Gabriela to create and direct the Boston Hope Ensemble. This program is now part of Winsor Music. A firm believer in the healing properties of music, Gabriela and her colleagues have performed in cancer units in Boston hospitals and presented benefit concerts for cancer research organizations in numerous venues throughout the United States.
A fierce champion of contemporary music, Gabriela has been fortunate to work closely with many significant composers on their own compositions, namely Pierre Boulez, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Lucier, Unsuk Chin, Joan Tower, Roger Reynolds, Chaya Czernowin, Steve Reich, Tania León, Brian Ferneyhough, and Helmut Lachenmann. In 2012 Gabriela joined the violin faculty of Wellesley College. Gabriela is co-artistic director of the much beloved Boston-based chamber music and outreach organization Winsor Music. Please visit winsormusic.org for more information!
Gabriela’s recording of Lou Harrison’s Suite for Violin and American Gamelan was highlighted in the New York Times Article “5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Classical Music.” Critics have acclaimed Ga- briela as “a young violin master,” and “one of Boston’s most valuable players.” Lloyd Schwartz of the Boston Phoenix noted, “...Gabriela Diaz in a bewitching performance of Pierre Boulez’s 1991 Anthèmes. The come-hither meow of Diaz’s upward slides and her sustained pianis- simo fade-out were miracles of color, texture, and feeling.” Others have remarked on her “indefatigably expressive” playing, “polished technique,” and “vivid and elegant playing.” Gabriela can be heard on New World, Centaur, BMOPSound, Mode, Naxos, and Tzadik records. Gabriela plays on a Vuillaume violin generously on loan from Mark Ptashne and a viola made by her father, Manuel Diaz. Gabriela is proud to be a core member of the team that created Boston Hope Music, bringing music to patients and frontline medical workers during the pandemic. More info can be found at bostonhopemusic.org
https://www.eurekaensemble.org/boston-hope-musicClarinetist Rane Moore is well-regarded for her thoughtful, provocative interpretations of standard and cutting-edge contemporary repertoire. Fiercely devoted to the new music communities of the East Coast and beyond, Moore is a founding member of the New York based Talea Ensemble which regularly gives premieres of new works at major venues and festivals around the world. Ms. Moore has joined the award winning wind quintet, The City of Tomorrow, for the upcoming season, and is also a member Boston’s Callithumpian Consort and Sound Icon.
Hailed as "superb," “incisive," and "sonorous and panoramic” (Boston Globe), David Russell maintains a vigorous schedule both as soloist and as collaborator in the U.S. and Europe. He was appointed to the teaching faculty of Wellesley College in 2005 and currently serves as Lecturer and Director of Chamber Music. He has served as Principal cello of the orchestras of Odyssey Opera and Opera Boston since 2010 and performs regularly with many ensembles based in New England such as Cantata Singers and Ensemble, the Worcester Chamber Music Society and Emmanuel Music. A strong advocate of new music, Russell has performed and recorded with contemporary ensembles such as Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Firebird Ensemble, Ludovico Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, Music on the Edge, Dinosaur Annex, Collage, the Fromm Players at Harvard, and entelechron. Recent projects include recordings of cello concertos by Chen Yi and Lukas Foss, recordings of solo and chamber works by Lee Hyla, Eric Moe, Tamar Diesendruck, Donald Crockett, Andrew Rindfleisch and Roger Zahab as well as premieres of music by David Lang, Barbara White, Marti Epstein, Daron Hagen, José-Luis Hurtado, Robert Carl, Gilda Lyons,and Jorge Martin. Russell has also recently premiered works for cello and orchestra by Laurie San Martin and Samuel Nichols, as well as works for solo cello by Tamar Diesendruck, Andrew Rindfleisch, and John Mallia. Russell has recorded for the Tzadik, Albany, BMOPSound, CRI, Centaur and New World Records labels.
Leela Subramaniam, a “gleaming soprano” according to Opera News, has performed with major opera houses like the Metropolitan Opera and LA Opera. Passionate about new music, she has been featured in five world premieres, notably by women of color. She’s a first-prize winner of the Joan Taub Ades Competition and a finalist in several prestigious competitions. Her recent roles include Annu in Thumbprint and Turan in Threshold of Brightness. A Los Angeles native, Leela holds degrees from UCLA and Manhattan School of Music, and continues to perform and teach in LA.
Rachel Wolz, a Los Angeles-based musician and educator, has graced stages with groups like the UCLA Philharmonia and The Colburn Orchestra. As the alto saxophonist for the Gold Line Quartet, she’s committed to community engagement in LA. Her accolades include third prize at the 2023 International Artists Competition and the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship at UCLA. Rachel has also toured with the Zoto Saxophone Quartet, offering educational clinics and masterclasses across Arizona.
Andreas Foivos Apostolou, a versatile musician from Thessaloniki, Greece, has made significant contributions in music composition, production, and performance. After mastering violin and voice, he expanded his skills to include drums and guitar during high school. Despite pursuing Chemical Engineering, his passion led him to Berklee College of Music, where he graduated with top honors. Now based in Los Angeles, Apostolos is known for his work in film and TV, including Palm Royale and Star Trek: Lower Decks, alongside producing and arranging for various artists. His background blends classical and contemporary music.
Lauded for their “precision and interpretation” and “distinct sense of unity and independence” (icareifyoulisten. com), Los Angeles-based Aperture Duo curates fearless programs that explore new sounds, voices, and techniques through the lens of violin and viola chamber music. Founded in 2015 by violinist Adrianne Pope and violist Linnea Powell, Aperture Duo is equally at home performing old and new music. Aperture Duo actively commissions diverse new works to expand the violin and viola duo repertoire.
Performance credits include the LA Phils Noon to Midnight Festival, Tuesdays @ Monk Space, the Main Stage at the Carlsbad Music Festival, Music at Boston Court, L.A. Signal Lab, Nadia Sirota’s podcast Living Music, Brooklyn’s Home Audio Concert Series, UC Santa Barbara Summer Music Festival, and Hear Now Music Festival.
Aperture Duo is a 2021 recipient of the Fromm Foundation Commission, and is a project of the Fulcrum Arts’ Emerge Fiscal Sponsorship Program. Their self-titled debut album, released in 2021 on Populist Records, can be found on bandcamp.
Two of the works on Cereus, the new album of music by Kay Rhie, are settings of poetic texts. But the album pointedly opens with its most challenging instrumental music, in the opening strains of the title track. Words inspired that piece too, as the composer explains: “Cereus (Night Blooms)” took flight from “a large collection of articles and scribbles” she found going through her writer-father’s medical papers as he was dying, materials that “were obviously possible source materials for his to-be written stories.”
The story Rhie creates in the piece is more or less abstract, certainly not programmatic, but evocative nonetheless. An initial series of fragmented stabs and swoons from the violin, cello, and clarinets develops into a flowing landscape of thematically consistent and dynamically varied gestures that grow more insistent and compelling as the picture fills in. A snaky violin melody in the fourth minute of the 13-minute piece heralds a sequence of compelling melodic and harmonic passages full of intense if clouded emotion. Past the halfway point, the fragmentation returns. But now, familiarized with the language of the piece, we find greater meaning in it.
Over the final minutes, peace and quiet reign, enhanced rather than disturbed by dissonances and rough timbres as we remember the wrenchings of the first section. These quiet moments flow nicely into the opening strains of the song cycle I Hear the Sound of Trees, settings of verse by Walt Whitman and A.R. Ammons on the general theme of oneness with nature.
Soprano Leela Subramaniam sings here (and in the other included song cycle, Suite from Quake) in a “legit” and quite beautiful operatic style that lends both grounding and authenticity to the music. The accompaniment in particular, from piano and alto saxophone, keeps the listener on their toes with unexpected accents and loping melodies. One detects some of the same eccentricities heard in the preceding instrumental work.
The compact songs are alternately sharp and soft, playful and contemplative. The music fits the words neatly, subtly. Listen for example to the stop-and-start of the short lines of “Reflective”; the demonstrative velocities and melodies bestowed on words like “motions” and “interweaving” in “Cascadilla Falls”; the long fadeout after the word “Souls” in “Perfections”; and the glowing, rising melody of the phrase “log and star” in “Love Song.”
Rhie was inspired to write …in the dreams of another…, a mini-suite in five movements for violin and viola, by observing during the pandemic “how people talk over one another on Zoom followed by awkward silences.” The two instruments engage in “conversation” characterized at times by talking over one another, but often in synchrony and rhythmic concert, especially in the first two movements (the tense and awkward “After You” and the quirky dance of “Circular”).
The mournful movement that gives the piece its title sits in the middle, with the viola humming by itself a dirge-like melody that seems to float in a keyless, timeless space. “Game,” which follows, isn’t playful like the title suggests, but anxious and longing, full of abrupt two-note gestures and descending glissandos. Finally it comes to rest in quiet harmony. The last movement seems to depict a hesitant attempt at connection, full of starts and stops but mostly in coordination.
Suite from Quake comprises four arias for soprano from Rhie’s Los Angeles-themed opera Quake, based on Odysseus’ homecoming in The Odyssey. Opera UCLA commissioned the opera and premiered it in 2023.
This is the most “accessible” music on the album, but still indisputably in Rhie’s vocabulary. Now backed by a larger ensemble, and placed in a dramatic narrative, soprano Subramaniam convincingly delivers melodies that shade into Romanticism. In Amanda Hollander’s libretto the characters Penelope and Athena move from melancholy to defiance, before philosophizing over Angelenos’ perpetual consciousness of the threat of an earthquake or a wildfire. (“This burning land of palm catastrophe / This ever-shaking world beneath our feet.”)
Cereus reveals Kay Rhie’s ability to adapt her style for abstraction and direct storytelling alike. The excellent musicianship on all the selections further strengthen her vision.
— Jon Sobel, 9.12.2025
This album of four chamber works, two with soprano, offers a portrait of composer Kay Rhie (b. 1971), but the autobiographical connections are personal and inward rather than pictorial. Rhie was born and raised in South Korea where her father actively pursued writing before the family immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s, after which his writing became dormant. This inspired in Rhie’s imagination a comparison with the night-blooming cereus, whose beauty is temporary and known only at night. The piece that Rhie composed in memory of her father, named after the flower, is a 13-minute clarinet trio with violin and cello.
New Focus’s notes make the piece sound daunting: “As arrivals in one line connect with sustained pitches in another, skittering lines coalesce and diverge, and fragments flower into fully formed phrases.” But as a listening experience Cereus is engaging and accessible, filled with imaginative instrumental color. The quick, skittering motifs, which function almost like tiles in a mosaic, often hint at melody, and the proportion of dissonance is low (especially in the context of New Music). Rhie has invented a sound world for this piece that hangs together as much through atmosphere as harmony, and there is an appealing theatricality that effortlessly holds the listener’s interest. The Winsor Music Trio gives an arresting performance full of personality.
For the song cycle I Hear the Sound of Trees, Rhie draws upon verses by one famous American poet, Walt Whitman, and one obscure one, A. R. Ammons (1926–2001), who taught English at Cornell, where Rhie studied. The unifying theme of the poems is Nature considered in moments of self-reflection and a sense of oneness. The original version, written while Rhie was at Cornell, was for voice and piano, which is still the scoring for two of the songs. The other three are for an unusual tiro of soprano, alto saxophone, and piano. The mood of the songs varies from the romantic lyricism of Whitman’s “After the dazzle of day” to the wry wit of Ammons’s “Reflective,” which is worth quoting in full: I found a weed that had a mirror in it and that mirror looked in at a mirror in me that had a weed in it. The addition of the sax is felicitous; Rhie finds imaginative ways to have it bounce in dialogue with the piano. Lyric soprano Leela Subramaniam applies her lovely tone quite expressively, and she sustains excellent pitch when asked to sing wide intervals. (I did find, though, that following with the printed texts was necessary; the singer’s enunciation tends to be indistinct.)
The most modestly scored piece is … in the dreams of another ..., a duo for violin and viola. Historically, this is a rare combination—I couldn’t recall any examples, but an online search prominently turned up two duos by Mozart, K 423 and 424, along with Martinů’s Three Madrigals for violin and viola from 1947. On reflection, though, this format isn’t a severe departure from duos for two violins. Rhie’s inspiration was whimsical, stemming from her observations of how people interact on Zoom, where “inadvertent interruptions, clumsy apologies, and quick stops and starts abound.” Quick stops and starts are a key feature in her composition. Rhie’s round plan is a suite of five very brief movements with musically suggestive titles, for example, “After You,” “Circular,” “If I don’t see you, I feel you.” She has invented a specific aphoristic style for each movement. The mood varies from the cheerfully abrasive and competitive to lyrical communion and a meditation on sound at the edge of silence. The performance by Aperture Duo is everything a composer could wish for.
We end with the largest work, Quake Suite, scored for soprano accompanied by a quintet of woodwinds, strings, and piano. The title refers to the always imminent possibility of a major earthquake in Los Angeles, where Rhie lives and teaches at her alma mater, UCLA. The music is adapted from a full-length opera, Quake, whose storyline, as Rhie describes it “follows the ending of the Odyssey where Odysseus (Otis) and Penelope reunite, albeit with a modern L.A. twist.” Home and homecoming are therefore the main themes, as they were for Rhie herself, who returned to Los Angeles after 15 years in Ithaca, New York, to find it much changed from the city she knew as her adopted home.
The four movements of the suite span two major vocal sections, “Otis Builds a World” and “I Soon Learned Men’s False Ways.” Rhie avails herself of striking theatrical gestures, like the frenetically racing flute and clarinet in the Introduction, and soaring melodic lines for the soprano. The tonal idiom shows nostalgic hints of Bernstein and Barber to my ears (the poignant vocal line in “Otis Builds a World” could almost be from Knoxville: Summer of 1915, in that open harmonies accompany heart-on-sleeve emotion.
To judge from these excerpts, Quake is the product of a gifted theater composer and would have great audience appeal. Subramaniam rises impressively to the challenges of vocal acting and technical virtuosity. Everything clicks in a way that contemporary vocal music rarely does. Quake Suite is the gem of the collection, but everything here is ingenious, adroit, and enjoyable.
— Huntley Dent, 12.01.2025
New Focus Recordings is an artist-led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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