On October 24, the enhakē chamber ensemble begins its fall mini-tour of Edward Knight’s work Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. Scored for clarinet, violin, cello and piano, Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon was commissioned by the ensemble at the request of its pianist Eun-Hee Park. Knight composed the five-movement, 15-minute work in 2011, and enhakē premiered it in 2012 and took the work on tour in Brazil.
Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon was inspired by the Korean folktale “Chilwol-chilsuk” – a love story about a Weaver and Herdsman. The story is the Korean telling of the origin of the Milky Way, and is celebrated annually on the festival day of July 7. Knight observes, “I briefly met Eun-Hee at Oklahoma City University (where I teach) when she was working on her MM. Afterward, she continued her DMA studies at Florida State University where she performed in a student ensemble named enhakē.
enhakē won the school’s chamber music prize which featured a performance in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. Eun-Hee then contacted me and asked me to write a new piece for the ensemble. At the time, three of the group’s four members were Korean, so Eun-Hee asked for a piece that was cinematic in nature and told a Korean story.”
“Ed Knight is one of enhakē’s favorite composers to work with,” Park shares. “Before I asked him about this project, I had the honor of hearing several of his compositions performed by my teacher Amy Cheng and they were very memorable. Ed’s piece is very dear and special to me personally. Due to enhakē’s unique instrumentation, we often collaborate with living composers, and this piece was created at a pretty early stage of our career He graciously agreed to write an extensive work based on one of the famous children’s stories in Korea.
Park continues. “We love Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon because it is a very audience-friendly work that paints a picture and portrays the story well. We also like how Ed structured the work with five movements to perfectly tell the essence of the story. It feels like you are watching a movie or reading a story, but with fun and exuberant melodies and harmonies. It is amazing that music can serve that purpose without words!” The tour continues with subsequent performances on the 25th at the University of St. Francis (Joliet, IL), and on the 27th at the Monroe Arts Center (Monroe, WI). Next summer, enhakē plans to commercially record the work.