By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Loa Cho, from Bowling Green, wants young musicians to have an opportunity she didn’t have when she was in high school.
While a student at Maumee Country Day School in 2017, Cho founded the Toledo Symphony Youth Ensemble, an assemblage that included over time a couple dozen musicians who in various configurations presented more than 60 events in the Toledo area.
“Chamber music itself — this might sound a bit cheesy — but I think of it as kind of connecting hearts or building a community within yourself and then inviting the audience to listen and be a part of that experience,” she said.
But the small ensembles Cho loved to perform in did not get the chance to participate in a chamber music competition. They had planned to play in several, but the logistics of transporting musicians and instruments proved insurmountable.
Even preparing for them, though, made a difference to the young musicians.
“We leveled up,” Cho said in a recent telephone interview from New York City where she is studying linguistics and music at Columbia University and the Juilliard School.
“When we were thinking about going out to a competition,” Cho said, “we practiced a lot more. We thought about how this would look to people we didn’t know, judges we were unfamiliar with, other performers we were performing for.”
They also “listened to a bunch of other recordings by other amazing performers,” she said. “We were just inspired and very motivated to work on our music together.”
So in 2020 when Cho won the Toledo Symphony’s Young Musician Award which comes with. $20,000 a year award that can be renewed for two more years, she decided to use the proceeds in part to create a chamber music competition in Toledo.
That dream will be realized, Saturday, May 14, at the University of Toledo, when the first Glass City Chamber Competition will be held. Six ensembles of high school age musicians and seven college ensembles have registered to compete. The junior division is open to musicians up to the age of 18 or in high school. The senior division is open to performers up to the age of 24 or enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate college program.
This year the competition is open to ensembles composed of strings and piano.
The high school division will perform in the morning starting at 10:30 a.m. with the award ceremony scheduled for 11:50 a.m. The senior division competition will begin at 1 p.m. with the awards ceremony scheduled for 3:15 p.m.
The event is being livestreamed. Visit the website for details.
The event is awarding $12,500 in prize money including $4,000 for the winner of the senior division and $2,000 for the winner of the junior division.
“I felt the community I grew up is what allowed me to become a musician,” Cho said. “I wanted to give back to the community” and provide opportunities for other young musicians.
Cho, who attended Kenwood Elementary in Bowling Green, was 7 when she began studying cello at the Toledo Symphony School of Music. She went on to play in the Toledo Symphony Youth Orchestra.
The inaugural competition has drawn from outside the region.
One ensemble in the junior division lists Katowice, Poland as its hometown. Others come from Ohio and southern Michigan including the Grazie string quartet from Perrysburg. The Triple Tonic Trio from Toledo will open the competition with an apt choice of music – the first movement of Beethoven’s Opus 1, Number 1.
Ensembles in the senior division represent some of the top music schools in the region – Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Cincinnati Conservatory, Indiana University, and the Cleveland Institute of Music.
“I was pleasantly surprised to see many groups that will travel sort of far” to participate, Cho said.
Judges for the event are violinist Merwin Siu and cellist Damon Coleman, both of the Toledo Symphony, and pianist Michael Boyd, of the University of Toledo faculty.
Cho has had the assistance of a quartet of fellow musicians – Cole Habekost, of Bowling Green State University, Erin Gardiner and Jose Martinez, both Butler University, and Ben Martz, of the University of Michigan. They are all high school friends of Cho’s. The Toledo Symphony is also providing assistance.
Coordinating the event long distance with a team at different institutions was a challenge, she said. “It worked better than I thought.”
It comes to a head just as Cho is finishing up her finals. She is in a program through which she will receive her bachelor’s from Columbia and the go on to receive a master’s degree from Juilliard.
One detail she wishes they’d had more time to arrange is setting up performances for the winning ensembles. She’s still hoping that can occur.
While she’s not performing at the event, she continues to be involved in chamber music in New York.
Her favorite ensemble is one with all cellists. Playing with other cellists, she said, is fun. Usually the cellos “have to give up beautiful melodies to violins.” In a cello ensemble, they get to play those melodies “and don’t always have to play bass.”
