Jennifer Koh
Jennifer Koh Launches “The American Concerto” Recording Series with a New Release on Cedille Records
Jennifer Koh Launches The American Concerto Recording Series with concertos by Vijay Iyer and Courtney Bryan.
The American Concerto, Volume One features Iyer’s Trouble and the world premiere recording of Bryan’s Syzygy, performed by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, conducted by Timothy Weiss, on Cedille Records.
The new recording series spotlights violin concertos commissioned through Koh’s landmark American Concerto project, inviting composers to explore American experiences, identities, and stories through the concerto form. The multi-season commissioning project reimagines the violin concerto format for the 21st century and explores a range of socio-cultural topics relevant to American life.
Assembly, the sixth movement from Vijay Iyer’s Trouble, was previously released as a Cedille Records exclusive single. The release coincides with the unveiling of American artist Carrie Mae Weems’ The Cool Blue Wind (2026), a permanent installation at the Obama Presidential Center. The work features an original soundtrack by Weems, Koh, Iyer, Somi, Craig Harris, and Jawwaad Taylor, titled Obama Suite, which incorporates the cadenza from Assembly.
Vijay Iyer’s six movement concerto, Trouble—co-commissioned by the Ojai Music Festival, Cal Performances in Berkeley, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (2017)—developed out of conversations between Koh and Iyer on the premise of the political climate following the 2016 election, the immigrant experience, and the high-profile injustices that have plagued U.S. history. A major impetus for the project was the story of Vincent Chin, the Chinese-American man who was beaten to death in a racially motivated assault by two white men in Detroit in 1982.
During a period plagued by economic recession and the decline of the auto industry, and fueled by anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States, Chin was misidentified as Japanese, attacked, and killed by Chrysler plant supervisor Ronald Ebens and his stepson, laid-off autoworker Michael Nitz, for “stealing” jobs. Koh was 5 years old at the time of this attack and remembers how this incident became a defining moment in Asian American history. With Trouble, Koh and Iyer used the violin concerto form to address racial violence through themes of birth, awareness, and collective resistance. Koh premiered the concerto with International Contemporary Ensemble, Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, and conductor Steven Schick at the Ojai Music Festival two weeks before the 35th anniversary of Chin’s death. Its title comes from Congressman John Lewis’s phrase, “good trouble, necessary trouble,” describing the practice of civil disobedience.
The first movement, Erasure, opens with the flute performing vulnerable, desolate-sounding melodies supported by low-moving bass notes on piano and eerie harmonics from the violin. The second movement moves between two-note ostinato figures swapped between violin and orchestra. The musicality becomes more urgent with each repetition and ends in a descending pattern drawn from a Phrygian dominant scale.
The centerpiece third movement, For Vincent Chin, is an expressively layered elegy, featuring pizzicato strings, plunky treble piano, and supportive ensemble, followed by the dance-like fourth movement, Cozening, with rhythms inspired by trap music. The chorale-like fifth movement, Accretion, interludes into the final section, Assembly, an all-encompassing, folk-like, episodic finale with growing contrapuntal lines that gradually dissipate before building up once more: a metaphor for the political injustices shaping Trouble’s musical storytelling.
Composer and pianist Courtney Bryan was also present in Ojai for the premiere of her choral work Yet Unheard, dedicated to Sandra Bland. It was there that she met Koh, sparking a creative relationship that ultimately led to Syzygy.
Commissioned for Koh by the Chicago Sinfonietta and ARCO Collaborative for The American Concerto project in 2019, Bryan wrote a three-movement concerto celebrating women artists. Each movement is inspired by a specific work by one of Bryan’s favorite artists: painter Alma Thomas (1891–1978); painter Frida Kahlo (1907–1954); and designer, architect, and artist Maya Ying Lin (b. 1959).
A term for the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system (such as the sun, moon, and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse), “Syzygy” is the influential force behind the recurring theme of eclipse present in all three works of art. With Koh’s violin as the connective musical thread guiding the listener throughout, Bryan’s concerto unfolds as a journey through light and darkness.
It opens with I. Alma Thomas: The Eclipse, in which Koh’s rhapsodic solo ascends to the violin’s highest register before blossoming into an intricate dialogue with the winds. The warmth and lyricism of II. Frida Kahlo: Tree of Hope, Keep Firm give way to the rhythmic urgency and technical virtuosity of the finale, III. Maya Lin: Eclipsed Time. Reviewing the 2020 world premiere, the Chicago Tribune declared the work “a triumph for composer, soloist and the Sinfonietta.”
Since launching The American Concerto in 2017, Koh has commissioned major new works from numerous composers, including Missy Mazzoli, Tyshawn Sorey, Nina Young, Lisa Bielawa, and Christopher Cerrone.
A 1997 graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, Koh has maintained a decades-long relationship with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble and its director, Timothy Weiss. Returning frequently as a guest artist and collaborator, she has worked with generations of Oberlin musicians in performances, workshops, premieres, and recordings. Their partnership reflects a shared commitment to contemporary music and the development of new work.
A longstanding Cedille Records artist, Koh has released 16 solo albums, including the GRAMMY Award-winning Alone Together. Other notable releases include the critically acclaimed Bach & Beyond series (2012, 2015, 2020), which the Chicago Tribune called an “epic traversal of solo violin repertoire” and “a monumental achievement”; Limitless (2019), featuring collaborations with leading composer-performers; and Saariaho X Koh (2018), which includes world-premiere recordings of works by Kaija Saariaho. Koh’s debut Cedille album, Solo Chaconnes (2002), paired Bach’s Second Partita with works by Richard Barth and Max Reger; she has also appeared as a featured soloist on numerous collaborative Cedille recordings.