“But we struggle to enlarge our visions: to see or at least to grope towards something which we have not yet recognized or perceived with our current faculties. Something in-between, something unknown, something which is out of our “system,” or something even recognized as ugly in current society. [...] For this concert, I tried to posit one question about beauty. I hope this trial of “asking,” similar to transformation formulae in mathematics or Buddhist zen questions, can give us room to think about us—about music, our society, our (and their) earth, and beauty, either transcendental or ephemeral.
– Dongryul Lee, from the original concert program notes for Goethe’s Garden, February 2017
