Denison Magazine
In 2018, Professor of Music Philip Rudd founded the Concerto-Aria Competition to showcase individual performers at Denison. The competition is an important experience for accomplished music students, many of whom go on to pursue careers in music.
Eligible singers and instrumentalists apply for the competition with the sponsorship of their private lesson professors and perform their pieces with piano accompaniment in a public competition. One to three winners are ranked and selected each year by an outside expert adjudicator.
This year’s Concerto-Aria Competition winners are Max Bishop ’26, clarinet; Andrew Hanson ’26, tenor; and Rumi Kang ’26, composition.
On April 18, Kang will perform a world premiere of his piano concerto alongside the Denison University Symphony Orchestra. Kang shares his reflections in this Q&A.
Q: When did you start working on this concerto?
A: In the last semester of my junior year, I started writing some music. Over the summer, when I did summer research for the concerto, I was intending to take the music I had and just make more of it and add onto it. But Professor Ching-chu Hu encouraged me to start over, basically. He said, ‘You have too many different ideas,’ so I really started this concerto this past summer.
Q: Did you always plan for this piece to be entered in the Concerto Competition?
A: I didn’t have that in mind. I just wanted to make a piece. But as I thought about it more, it dawned on me that I could actually do this, especially when I was writing the proposal for my summer research.
Q: What did your composing process look like over the summer?
A: I would walk around Granville and think about certain musical ideas, and then whenever something good popped up, I would go to Eisner and try to write it down. But most of my compositional process is silent. I met with Professor Hu twice a week, and we’d talk about certain ideas that I had and whether I should develop them or put them aside for now. In the beginning, he encouraged me to generate 30 ideas a day. The idea could be 10 seconds, it could be 20 seconds, it could be a minute. He encouraged me to generate a lot of them, to keep me from censoring myself. So no matter how bad I thought it was, I just wrote whatever came to my head. Professor Hu wanted me not to be so judgmental about my ideas because if I shoot down every idea that comes, I can’t get anything done.
Q: What was your process for orchestrating the piece?
A: I write my music on the piano first, and then I orchestrate it. And usually when I come up with an idea, I’m not just hearing piano notes. For example, one idea I might hear as a flute, or maybe I hear the idea as a low instrument, like a bassoon or a bass. Basically, I have to decipher what I hear in my head and match it to an instrument.
Q: How are you feeling about performing?
A: I’m feeling nervous. I’ve been practicing it a lot, and I think I’ll do okay. I still have time, and if I practice every day, that’ll add up. But I can’t really do anything to stop the nerves. I can only let the nerves make me practice more.
Q: Is there anything that you want people to know about the piece?
A: I would say that this piece was inspired by a lot of composers, especially Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff. My piece starts big, and the middle is slow and beautiful, and then it ends very climactically. In the grand scheme of things, this piece is not a very radical piece. It’s still sort of romantic-sounding. And it is a living piece, so it’s not finished.
Denison University Symphony Orchestra concert
7 p.m., Saturday, April 18, in Swasey Chapel
Free, tickets not required
The Denison Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Singers, and Concert Choir present an evening of choral and orchestral music featuring works by Haydn and Mendelssohn, alongside performances by the 2025-26 Concerto-Aria Competition winners: Max Bishop ’26, clarinet; Andrew Hanson ’26, tenor; and Rumi Kang ’26, composition.
The program includes Haydn’s Te Deum and Mendelssohn’s Verleih uns Frieden, and Hear My Prayer, Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto performed by Bishop, Guido’s Song from Nine sung by Hanson, and the world premiere of Kang’s Piano Concerto, performed by the composer. Conducted by Philip Rudd and Harris Ipock, the concert celebrates masterworks, student artistry, and new music.
March 27, 2026
