Those in higher education hope that their students display growth, from the first year of college to the last phase of earning a doctorate.
But cellist Peter Ko, who started at UC San Diego in 2019, has exceeded his mentor’s expectations.
“Compared to our first meeting, it’s a sea change,” said UCSD music professor Charles Curtis, who is Ko’s longtime advisor. “There’s been a paradigm shift. It’s been a rewarding process.”
Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in El Centro, Ko started studying the cello at age 10 and was active in the desert town’s school orchestra. When he left to attend UCSD, though, he enrolled as a computer engineering student.
“My only understanding of how people could make a living through music was teaching in school,” said Ko, 32, who is Korean American. “I felt the need to pick a major of that sort — out of certain societal and cultural expectations.
“Within my first year, I realized engineering wasn’t working out for me. I more or less stumbled into music and very quickly got this wake-up call, which was that this craft is actually much more intricate and denser than I imagined.”
After earning his bachelor’s degree in music, Ko got his master’s at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
He is now a UCSD doctoral candidate in contemporary music and cello performance under the mentorship of Curtis, who is a well-known cellist and composer.
“What I find very impressive and striking about Peter is how he’s come into this world of experimental music,” Curtis said. “He wasn’t born into an artsy bohemian family in Greenwich Village or Venice Beach. He didn’t grow up looking at far-out art and reading experimental poetry.
“Growing up in El Centro in, I think, a conservative family environment, he came to his audition for the undergraduate music program with a very traditional piece. Over this long period of time, Peter has grown into a completely different musician, Curtis said. “I hope Peter continues to reflect and broaden his knowledge and his understanding. And I hope he es it on through performing and through teaching.”
‘Music helps me connect’
Ko serves as the principal cellist in the La Jolla Symphony and has appeared with other local groups, including North Coast Symphony, UCSD’s Palimpsest, San Diego New Music and Project BLANK. He has played at festivals throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Europe.
Monday night, Ko will perform another San Diego New Music concert, which he curated. It will be held at the Athenaeum Art Center in Logan Heights. Ko and Curtis will collaborate on Los Angeles composer Tashi Wada’s “Duets,” which Curtis recorded in 2014.”
“Wada has created an incredibly singular experience,” Ko said. “The entire piece frames itself around the idea of unison. But there’s a zeroing in on Charles’ part and then my part and it calls into question what unison is.”
Charissa Noble, San Diego New Music’s executive director, is pleased Ko chose the ambitious piece.
“The kind of music Peter plays is unique,” Noble said. “The Tashi Wada piece is not performed very frequently. It’s not typical of what you’d hear at one of our concerts.”
Curtis said Monday’s concert will show how sophisticated and thoughtful Ko has become as a musician. Both selections are challenging to play.
The second piece on the program is the world premiere of “shade, illumination,” composed by Adam Zuckerman, also a UCSD graduate student. The solo cello piece draws inspiration from the way light shifts in Houston’s famed Rothko Chapel.
Working with Zuckerman has been a lot of fun for Ko. He finds music collaborations to be especially important, including his relationships built through teaching. Ko offers private lessons and teaches through Sorrento Valley’s Villa Musica.
“If I’m being completely honest with myself, I’m a slightly socially awkward person,” he said. “But music helps me connect with others, whether it’s with my fellow musicians in rehearsal or my students or the composers I work with. I learn a lot from my students.
“For me, music is a social thing. There’s no such thing as music just existing by itself,” Ko said.
‘Skill and grace’
Ko’s social interactions are multiplied when performing with the 230-member La Jolla Symphony & Chorus. He had been a stagehand for the volunteer orchestra before the pandemic shutdown. As concerts started to reappear, Steven Schick, the symphony’s music director at the time, asked him to become the group’s principal cellist.
Ko has found it a fruitful — and social — endeavor.
“The symphony’s made up of people with regular jobs: doctors, lawyers and students,” he said. “But a person who works as a doctor and then spends their evenings in what can be intense rehearsals is not a regular person! Being in the orchestra keeps me in touch with different perspectives.”
The La Jolla Symphony, now led by music director Sameer Patel, chooses pieces from the classical canon and by contemporary composers. While Ko entered the UCSD graduate program with the idea of performing new music, he is at home with both.
“The first time I heard Peter, I realized he was a cellist of uncommon gifts,” said UCSD’s Schick, now the symphony’s music director emeritus.
“Peter is simply able to play anything. But perhaps his most remarkable quality is his commitment to diverse music-making. He sees music as a way to connect with people, and he always does that with skill and grace.”
San Diego New Music: ‘Shadings,’ featuring Peter Ko
When: 7:30 p.m., Monday
Where: The Athenaeum Art Center in the Bread & Salt building, 1955 Julian Ave., Logan Heights.
Tickets: $12-$30
Phone: 858-454-5872
Online: sandiegonewmusic.com
