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The Letter of Recommendation column of The New York Times "celebrates the overlooked and underappreciated." A worthwhile exercise, one I—who poke around in every sidewalk box of discarded trinkets and peruse every bookstore's dollar-book table—aspire to do every day. These are my Letters of Recommendation—love letters to life.

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I read Honeybees and Thunder by Riku Onda some years ago, and immediately fell in love with it: a diverse cast of young pianists, unified by their love of music, brought together by an international piano competition. Seeing no translation in English, I took it upon myself to translate it from (the already-translated-from-Japanese) Korean to English. I don't aim for a perfectly accurate translation—this began as a project to sustain my Korean—and it is unfunded and unauthorized. But it is good fun, and if you enjoy music or play the piano, you might just find it delightful.

This translation is dedicated to my parents.

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Volume I: Preliminaries

1: Theme

2: Prelude

3: Nocturne

4: A Star is Born

5: Lullaby

6: Drumroll

7: Zuizui Zukkorobashi

8: The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 No. 1

9: Rocky Theme Song

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Volume II: First Round

1: No Better Business than Showbiz

2: Ballade

3: Intermezzo

4: A Star is Born

5: It's Only a Paper Moon

6: Hallelujah

7: You'd Be So Nice to Come Home to

8: Romance

9: An die Freude

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Volume III: Second Round

1: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

2: Black Keys

3: Rondo Capriccioso

4: Étude-Tableau

5: The Ride of the Valkyries

6: First Steps Toward Love

7: Moonlight

8: Over the Rainbow

9: The Rite of Spring

10: Feux Follets

11: Heaven and Hell

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Volume IV: Third Round

1: Intermission

2: The Carnival of the Animals

3: Sonata in B Minor

4: Masquerade

5: Je te veux

6: L'Isle Joyeuse

7: Battles Without Honor and Humanity Theme Song

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Volume V: Final Round

1: Orchestra Rehearsal

2: Coda

3: Auld Lang Syne

4: Music

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On rare occasions, a good idea for a short story will occur to me; on rarer occasions, I will have the time and mental wherewithal to draft and edit it. All my fiction can be found below.

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Moments Musicaux is a generic name for a collection of music; Schubert, Rachmaninoff, and others have composed suites titled as such. Below are my musical moments: my favorite moments in music.

(N.B.: there are many undoubtedly excellent, transcendent, etc. moments in music—the finale of Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 31 or Mahler Two, the tutti of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto or the explosive brass of Mussorgsky's "The Great Gate of Kiev." But I aim to write about the less obviously glorious, less immediately breathtaking musical moments—sometimes, a single pause or note do the trick just as well.)