Don’t you wish you could keep in touch with our Emerging Artists after they’ve left Garth Newel? Those of you who have been PEAPS (Patrons of the Emerging Artist Program) know what I mean. And for the rest of you, if you’ve ever formed a relationship with a young person on the cusp of a brilliant career, you also know what I mean.
We created our Emerging Artist Alumni Series with the idea of showcasing the creativity of the fellows as they’ve progressed in their careers. Alumni send us their project proposals, which we (GNPQ) then review, selecting the one that we feel presents a compelling concept for an intriguing and polished concert. This year we selected Jordan Bartel (our violin fellow from 2022), who had formed a trio after his time at Garth Newel. We were impressed with their beautifully expressive playing and thoughtfully articulated proposal of “Nights”, where the concert explores the cross-section of how both literature and music delve into the “darkest time of day”.
“Nights is an exploration of the vastly contrasting literary themes in music across centuries and cultures depicting the darkest time of day. From Schubert’s warm and genial Notturno to the emotionally complex and turbulent journey of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, the night may subvert traditional images that view darkness of night as an encroachment on the light of day.” (From Trio Laval’s Alumni Series project proposal).
And because it is in their own words that this project came to life, Trio Laval (Jordan Bartel – violin, Sarina Zhang -cello, Sean Terada Yang -piano) sat down for a conversation about their project, what audiences might expect to hear on June 20th, and about themselves. (Also, there might be mention of cats).
Your group has done a LOT since your formation in 2024. Tell us about your trio’s origin story, why you chose the name Trio Laval, and your experience doing chamber music at UMich (Go Blue!)
Jordan: Our trio came together by recommendation of one of our dear mentors, Amy I-Lin Cheng, who knew all three of us separately and thought we’d pair well together. After meeting each other, we were tasked to perform a full recital program at the end of that same week with a large variation in repertoire, which was really a huge test of how well we could work with each other. I think we all felt it was a great success musically, but more importantly we really enjoyed spending the time together and got along really well, and things quickly got off the mark from there.
Chamber Music at UMich is such a core part of the student experience. There’s really endless opportunities for you to explore, from traditional formats like piano trio or string quartet, to bluegrass groups and more unusual instrument collaborations like strings with percussion or electronics. One of the great things about having such a large faculty as well is the variations of perspectives you can receive, and the faculty members are very supportive of coaching with as many people as possible. In addition, UMich does an amazing job of expanding group activities outside of rehearsals and coaching, with now two chamber music competitions within the school per year, but also providing funding for groups to compete all around the world and for larger student projects. We got the opportunity to study for a week in Berlin with the Berlin Philharmonic, which was really a life changing experience to experience such a vibrant city working with truly some of the world’s best musicians.
Sarina: The origin of our name is a silly story. As Jordan detailed, our first recital happened so quickly after we started playing together that we didn’t have time to think about a name. The trio was sitting in a coaching with my cello professor, Richard Aaron, when he asked about our name and immediately gave us one… with a game. Loosely paraphrased, he told us: “I’m going to pull up a map of… say, France, and Sarina, close your eyes and point to the screen. Whatever town your finger lands on will be your name.” My finger landed on ‘Laval’. “The Laval Trio… Trio Laval…? Trio… Laval.” I thought I was humoring Professor Aaron, as was the entire trio, when we looked at each other repeating ‘Trio Laval’ and smiling as Aaron looked at us. Yet, as quickly as I’d pointed to this little town on the iPad screen, this new name stuck. It felt like us; it represented the origin of the trio, starting with being paired together without knowing each other and then immediately realizing everything fit.
Sean: When I chose to attend UM, I was told that the greatest asset was the great people that I would meet through the faculty and student body. The chamber music program at UM helps facilitate those encounters, and most of my favorite memories at UM happened due to the great programming and intensity that the chamber music department brings to the table.
Your proposal mentioned that “Nights is a continuation of one of our previous programs Cycles, in which we explored music cyclical in nature and the effect of thematic development in pieces based on the day’s cycle, breath, and life.” Can you tell us more about this project? How did the idea of “cycles” come about?
Jordan: This project really stemmed actually from our very first recital program, where we played Saans (Breath) by living Hindustani-American composer Reena Esmail. The piece really challenged the classical approach to our instruments we are trained with, featuring improvisatory rhythmic and ornamental figures that exist in Hindustani music, as well as an overwhelming meditative experience performing and listening to the piece. We really wanted to take this music further than one performance and soon came across Turina’s Circulo, which paints a beautiful soundscape exploring the scenes of a day’s cycle, from the sunrise to a bustling scene in Spanish night life, and back to twilight. Lastly, we typically try to program at least one major canonic work, and soon decided on the Tchaikovsky Trio. While not as obviously cyclical, Tchaikovsky is viscerally grieving from the death of his dear mentor and friend, and the result is an absolute marathon of a work that covers just about every emotion that one could have, from celebration and joy to absolute dread, particularly evident in the theme and variations movement. What really brought these three pieces together is that all three pieces ended how they began musically, and while each had a very different way of getting there, the returns all feels so different from the beginning as a result of what it took to get there, which we felt was really a beautiful representation of this idea of breath, days, and life.
We really enjoyed this programmatic approach to a concert rather than simply playing repertoire we liked. Nights was a bit inspired actually by Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet, where death in the second movement is represented as a warm inviting character of relief rather than this ominous looming darkness one might expect it to be. These subverted expectations led us to examine how many arts, music and otherwise, depict nighttime and twilight, but also how different some of these pieces are.
Tell us about Boondiskulchok’s Night Suite, and what audiences might expect to hear
Boondiskulchok’s Night Suite is a deeply personal composition for Thai composer Prach Boondiskulchok. That personal tie does not appear through sentiment; instead, it appears through narrative and setting. Boondiskulchok sets the idea of “night” against three different settings across the three movements, and they each unravel to share a story about how Boondiskulchok himself has experienced the night in different contexts. The Prelude has a bit of a crystalline character to depict the night sky, while the second movement (Blues) shares more about his annual attempts at joining the New Orleans dance scene. The final setting is aptly titled “Lullaby” where he sets the night to a lullaby that his grandmother used to sing to him. What we hope is that the audience will place themselves in Boondiskulchok’s shoes as we portray elements of nature, dance, and song in the work, and we would love to hear how the audience experiences the night in their own cultures and travels.
You mention how you enjoy presenting programs alongside other art forms. Our audience at Garth Newel enjoys this as well, as it allows more gateways into connecting with the music. Can you tell us more about the extra-musical inspirations of your program?
Sarina: With our program, we wanted to showcase not only music that explores the night in some way, but also music that explores our individual extra-musical interests. In our conversations as a trio, we’re often sharing things that have excited or inspired us, whether that be a piece of music or something outside of that. Something we individually ponder on is how we might marry our training and primary journeys as classical musicians with our varied interests, including other genres/styles of music, literature, physical art, and even neuroscience. We chose works that are heavily entangled with extra-musical things; a sonic representation of the complexity of being a human being and persistence nevertheless through uncertainty or confusion.
When Schubert wrote Notturno, he was in the presence of death, being both motivated by it with Beethoven’s recent death affecting him greatly, and accepting it as a looming shadow, having been told he had only a few months to live. Thai-British composer Prach Boondiskulchok combines traditional folk music his grandmother sang to him with music evoking an annual visit to New Orleans in Night Suite. Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht is a piece based on Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name. The music is a tone poem, corresponding directly to the narrative. The poem centers on confession, absolution, moral and emotional crisis, and upholds Dehmel’s belief that a single act of compassion can transform the world. Florence Price’s Night, originally for singer and piano, was similarly inspired by poetry. Price sets the introspective lyrics to music, depicting nighttime as a peaceful and nurturing time. On a late night drive along the Oregon coast, Jordan shared Schubert’s Notturno with Sean and me. Notturno enchanted us, and perhaps invigorated by the vast dark sky and seemingly endless ocean outside the car, we began crafting a program surrounding the night; a time of day that can have many juxtaposing implications. It can be transformative, or grounding. It encompasses both dusk and dawn, representing both ends or beginnings, of death or life.
I love that Van Gogh quote you use in your proposal narrative, “The night is more alive and more richly colored than the day”. How is this statement true to you?
Sarina: I can’t speak for Jordan and Sean of course, but for me, Van Gogh’s quote is true to me in that night time has always been a safe time for me. The night has been the time where I actually live, after being locked up in the day by work, school, and in my younger years, parental surveillance. That strange time when the whole world is asleep is often when I feel I have the license to do whatever I want, with the comfort that the only next thing waiting for me is sleep. (I don’t mean to sound so dramatic!!)
Sean: I am a night owl, so I have a personal stake in believing that Van Gogh’s quote is true. Beyond personal bias, though, I find that the night hosts more liberty, honesty, and intimacy than the daytime. More and more, our lives during the daytime are inundated with demands of efficiency and profit. The night is precious for the people who protect their evenings as a time to express themselves without the shackles of the daytime.
As a student, I remember many a late night in the University of Michigan music building. Did that spark a fascination with the creative possibilities that lie in night time?
Jordan: It’s been many many years since I was a late night practicer, now very much an early morning person. Perhaps the experience is still really similar, there’s something really amazing about being in the music building when it’s completely quiet and empty. I think it’s comparable to meditative experiences that are rare in 2026, being surrounded by phones and instant stimulation. Practicing in complete silence (compared to hearing 200 concertos around you during school regular hours) brings this fascinating level of focus and awareness, as well as less worry about what time it is or when you need to be finished by. I’m not sure that this has a direct inspiration with our program, but that feeling is something that we’d like to capture for the audience, and I think really comes out in pieces like the Schubert.
Jordan – fill us in with what you’ve been doing since your time at Garth Newel, and what you’re looking forward to in your musical journey.
First and foremost it’s hard to believe it’s somehow been four years since I was at Garth Newel! A quick summary – I completed my masters in Chamber Music and Violin performance in 2023 and decided to stay for two more years for the Specialist program (equivalent to most school’s Artist Diploma) with my dear teacher and frequent Garth Newel performer Aaron Berofsky. That proved to be an excellent decision as I got the chance to work with Sean and Sarina, not only two amazing musicians but people who have become some of my best friends. From there I moved to Texas to start my DMA at University of Texas at Austin, studying with Sandy Yamamoto. The past four years has been filled with of course endless chamber music, but I’ve been really lucky to meet people from all around the world and it’s been really evident with the professional opportunities the Trio has gotten how important it is to maintain these relationships, which is why it’s so special for me to “come home” to Garth Newel.
It’s hard to pinpoint what I’m looking forward to most going forward. This past year I’ve done really a lot of everything (especially practicing), including teaching Sandy’s undergraduate students, to playing concertos with orchestras, early music, chamber music, and in Austin some collaborations with other art forms – I just performed this last weekend with a ballet company. I’ve really enjoyed all this variation and hope that I can maintain this throughout my career.
Lastly, because your ensemble bio mentions you enjoy sharing photos of your cats with each other, tell us about your furbabies, and provide a picture if you want!
Jordan: I am a proud dad of 3 kitties. Our cats Remus (Male Tabby) and Nala (Female Tortie) we adopted in Michigan 3 years ago and moved with us down to Texas, and somehow we adopted a third little girl just a couple months ago, Peach. They spend about 18 hours a day watching our newly installed birdhouse on our patio, and especially Peach is best friends with her Aunt Sarina. (Pics in order: window watching, Nala, Remus, Peach)
Sarina: I have a 3½ year old diluted tortie named Wei Wei 🙂 I also adopted her in Michigan and she has been my constant companion through grad school. Extremely silly, extremely shy of anyone except me and my partner, an extreme salmon lover, and extremely cuddly. She wants to be wherever I am and is an excellent employee at the biscuit-making factory.
Trio Laval will be at Garth Newel on June 20th, 5pm concert with a buffet picnic afterwards. They’ll be playing Florence Price’s Night, Franz Schubert’s Notturno, Prach Boondiskulchok’s Night Suite, and the lush masterpiece Verklärte Nacht by Arnold Schoenberg. For tickets and reservations, click here.
