Program Note (Sleepless Souls for Violin, Bb Clarinet, and Piano)
This piece is dedicated to 309 killed or missing passengers from the Sewol Ferry Disaster near southwest coast of South Korea on Apr. 16, 2014. The music starts with slow, lamenting melodic motives with some traditional Korean folklores, thinking of past memories with their classmates (most of the victims were high school students on the school trip). Then it becomes agitating in the middle section, describing the emergency where they were waiting for the rescue while the ship was sinking but the rescue team could not approach to the scene because of bad weather with strong current. After the climax, it returns to the beginning music describing the calm sea after the storm (calling their friends' names but no answers)… 
Link to the Wikipedia article about the incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol

Sleepless Souls

Drifting Down The Stream

Program Note (No Coward Soul Is Mine for Mezzo Soprano and Piano)
Bronte wrote this famous funeral poem after being inspired by death of her mother and couple of sisters. In this poem the speaker courageously asserts that her soul is not afraid because her faith in heaven, embracing doubt, nature, death and immortality, arms her against fear from life’s uncertainties, and I tried to keep this in mind in setting the poem to this song.

No Coward Soul Is Mine

Program note
I wrote this music after recalling the lifestyles of new generation in 1990s I saw and heard when I was young. Called Generation X, this generation refused to conform to existing socially accepted ideas and expressed this with their freewheeling lifestyles. It was around that time when lots of new trends in fashion, music, etc., became popular, and these trends easily distinguish this generation from previous generation. I tried to make music describing their distinctive lifestyles, in lively, jazzy style, but also Sturm und Drang type passages describing conflict with surrounding world (in middle section).

Freewheeling

For SATB (with divisi) unaccompanied choir

Psalm 23

For unaccompanied SATB choir (with divisi)

Psalm 130 De Profundis

Psalm 150

For Flute, Bb Clarinet, Percussion, Piano, Tenor, and Violin

Lullaby

For Flute, Harp, Mezzo-Soprano, and Viola

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Program Note
In this three movement piece I tried to express into music what I saw and felt from three different places during this mid-summer trip to NYC…

Edward Choi