An ECM project grant + an alumni collaboration
Each spring, our Entrepreneurship Center for Music (ECM) awardsproject grants designed to support College of Music students in their professional development, entrepreneurial endeavors or creative works.
In 2024, Er-Hsuan Li (DMA ‘24) received such a grant in support of the world premiere of a piano concerto composed by John Clay Allen (DMA ’19) who’s also a College of Music lecturer in music technology + composition. Li, now assistant teaching professor at Montana State Թ, performed the concerto with a string orchestra at the Dairy Arts Center, and the ECM grant helped pay the musicians and rent the venue.
This March, “The Stone Harp” album was featuring both Allen’s piano concerto with Li as soloist, as well as Allen’s concerto for oboe and string orchestra featuring Ingrid Anderson (BM ’08) as soloist. The recording is a collaboration between Allen and the Boulder Symphony under the direction of conductor Devin Patrick Hughes.
Li explains that the process for preparing for the premiere of the piano concerto and the recording session a year later was different—already familiar with the music, he could focus more on the feeling:
“The first time through, it was mainly trying to understand how to properly put this together. How does it work? While the composer is also modifying slightly to make sure everything works.
Er-Hsuan Li performs the world premiere of "The Stone Harp"
piano concerto at the Dairy Arts Center in 2024.
“The second time, we already know how it’s supposed to be. So the second time around for me, it was more like, what personal interpretation will come into it—rather than simply putting it together.”
Adds Lee of the one-movement concerto, “It still has all the exciting and virtuoso parts, and there are touching and slow parts—but they weave from one to another. It does not have a clear break of sections which is quite a unique experience in concerto listening.”
While Li has participated in recordings before—like saxophone duos for his own DMA project—this is the first time he’s had a featured part. “This, to me, is very special because not only doI consider this a solo album, but a concerto album—which is really not something that most musicians get to do.”