Shian: Well, today we have invited a Korean composer who is currently studying in Peabody composition major, whose name is Soyoona, umm, right? Sorry, could you please introduce yourself?

Soyoona: Yeah. Hello, my name is Soyoona Kim(Seo Yoon Kim). I am a first year Master student in Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. I am now studying with professor Michael Hersch.

Shian: Michael Hersch? Wow. Um, could you briefly introduce how you entered the music world and later became a composer?

Soyoona: Yeah, sure. I began music at an early age, like 5 years old. My mom just wanted to introduce me to some music and my dad really liked music. They brought me a violin. Violin is my first instrument. So I played some violin and my mom used to sing many songs, some Korean children songs to me every day since I was born maybe.

She was playing these songs on a piano every day to me, so I was very used to music since my childhood. And I entered a composition world when I was eight. In that time in Korea, all elementary school children had to submit a journal, diary to the teacher every day because teachers wanted to improve students’ writing skills. So I was writing diaries, and we actually had a special notebook for the diary. You write your diary on the one page and you submit this every day to the teacher, but I felt it was too short for me to write on one page. So I had another notebook, then I was writing my diary like three to four pages every day. Yeah, it’s private but I don’t write very private things. (laugh) I just write, like, a little bit private things. So I just could show it to my teacher. But my teacher said, you wrote your diary too long, we should not write that long. And my mom heard that from me, and she was very upset because she thought the teacher is suppressing my creativity. So that’s why she taught me composition because she wanted my creativity not to be suppressed from the teacher, and that’s how I began composing.

Shian: Wow, that’s really nice.

Soyoona: Thanks to my mom, I began composing.

Shian: Oh, that’s really interesting, and today you brought your piece, which was a part of the Melodic Timpani Project, that called Seya Seya. So could you tell us about how the collaboration of this project happened?

Soyoona: Yeah. So I wrote this piece when I was in Austin, Texas in 2017. I was auditing some classes in the University of Texas in Austin and I went to some DMA student’s recital. That recital was Diana’s recital. It was her first DMA recital and she was a percussion major. I listened to her recital and she was really good. She was awesome and I saw in her program that she was doing Melodic Timpani Project, which is a project that is exploring Timpani as a melodic instrument because people used to think that timpani and percussion instruments are really rhythmic instruments, but she wants to explore the melodic aspects of timpani and she wants to create more repertoires for melodic timpani. So I saw that she was looking for new pieces for Melodic Timpani Projects. I wanted to write to her because she was so awesome. She plays really nice and I was really interested. I have never been in such projects before and it was the first time for me to write for the percussion instruments, so I thought that was really a nice opportunity and after recital, I just came to her and said, ‘I am a composer, and interested in your Melodic Timpani Project, do you think we can collaborate?’ And she said yeah. That’s what happened. So it’s just magical.

Shian: And you did so well with this piece.

Soyoona: I was so happy to collaborate with her.

Shian: Is there anything interesting among the rehearsal time?

Soyoona: The rehearsal time, yeah. There are a lot of stories, but I think the most interesting thing is: we were collaborating since the beginning stage of this piece. So I just wrote like three lines and then brought to her, and she was playing these and she telling me if that is playable or not playable, and we were kind of developing this piece together. There was some moment when we were trying things with crotale. So if you watch my piece played, you can see I have crotale on the top of the timpani head, and you hit the crotale and do some pedaling. It makes this crotale sound change, so it has not ‘ding’ sound, but [a vibrato]. Actually, that was Diana’s creation. I put the crotale on the timpani when she was doing pedaling. It sounded very strange, and we were saying, ‘Oh, this is the blue bird! It sounds like a bird. This is the blue bird!’. I thought this is perfect for the blue bird, because it is such a different sound from timpani sound, and you cannot hear the crotale sound [like a vibration] usually, so I thought that’s just perfect way to use the crotale for this piece.

Shian: And you use crotale in your piece, right? But actually, timpani and crotale is not a very common combination. Why would you use that? Is that something from Korean culture?\

Soyoona: Yeah, that was a very good question. We don’t have crotale in Korean culture, but we have these tiny bells used in Korean Buddhist ceremonies, especially when somebody dies and we want to lament that soul and comfort other families that have been left behind. The monk is reciting his or her lines and then we have this little bell shaking, ‘dalang dalang’, when you are doing the ceremony for the dead people. I was thinking of that sound because it matches this piece’s story. This piece is about people who died during the revolution, failed rebellion which is the historical background of Seya Seya. It’s a real story and it’s based on the real story of the late 19th century. There are a lot of people who died during the rebellion, and I wanted to comfort their souls, and kind of do the ceremony for the dead people. So I borrowed that ceremony from Korean Buddhism and the sounds I was hearing during the ceremony. That bell-like sound is comforting dead people and the people who left behind and I imitated them by using crotale.

Shian: Do you think this bell sound is to make the soul relieved or something?

Soyoona: Right. I also think so because, by this bell sound, it’s comforting dead souls and telling them ‘you shouldn’t be angry with the world, you should go to heaven, please rest in peace’, something like that. I think we have that meaning when we are doing that ceremony.

Shian: OK, back to the piece: so in this piece, we can hear a motive played at the beginning and the end that should be the Korean traditional song Seya Seya. But what makes this idea occur to you, like you want it to be played on timpani?

Soyoona: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I chose that melody because when I thought I would write for melodic timpani, so it’s melodic timpani, but there are not many notes on timpani. You can only have like four timpani or five timpani. A lot of Korean folk songs are based on pentatonic or tritonic scales, which means they have only three notes or five notes in their piece. So the Seya Seya has only three notes, but actually four notes, because the lowest note is at the top, one octave higher. So it’s basically four notes or three notes, so I thought I can use this four notes melody and it will be very effective on timpani because you don’t need any extra notes, you only need four notes and that will be effective on timpani. And also in Korean traditional singing there are a lot of things like bending down, glissando, and trembling [vibration], so I thought it will be very effective to use those elements on timpani by pedals, so she can hit the notes, then have a pedal, or like tremble, [vibrato]. I thought if I combine Korean traditional singing with timpani techniques, it will be perfect for Melodic Timpani Project. So I used it.

Shian: So during the performance, the audience can notice that Diana did a lot of gestures, is it also from Korean Culture?

Soyoona: I don’t know if the audience noticed this, because it’s very Korean. It came from the Korean percussion playing. So there is a Korean percussion instrument, Korean drum, named “Janggu” and it has a head, not on top, but on the left and the right side, so in order to play that instrument your hand should be going from the left side to the right side, very busy. And when I saw Diana playing timpani, she had a lot of timpani, like four, and I saw her hand going from the second timpani and the third timpani, going back and forwards. I thought, ‘wow that looks very Korean percussion gesture.’ So I saw a lot of things that can be connected to Korean cultures, so I used that in my piece as well.

Shian: Thanks to your introduction of Seya Seya. So do you have any other pieces that are inspired by Korean culture?

Soyoona: Oh yeah, I have a lot of pieces inspired by Korean culture. So in 2017 I also wrote a piece for four hands on a piano. It was a piece for children. This was inspired by Korean folk tune. I borrowed the melody from a Korean children song, traditional children song. And I was doing some variation on that traditional folk melody. I also wrote an opera named Dear Father. It was premiered in April, 2 weeks ago. It’s actually based on a true autobiographical story of a Korean woman who lived in the early 20th century. It was also based on Korean culture and Korean history of the early 20th century. So I am very much interested in exploring Korean heritages and being inspired by Korean history. Because I think there is a lot of things to be discovered and explored that we can use because Korean culture is so rich. I think there are so many things we can enjoy, bring to our new music world. I read a lot of Korean myth and Korean fairy tales, love Korean folk melodies, and there are so many stories that I can tell. So there are plenty of sources I can work with.

Shian: How about your next piece, is that also from Korean culture?

Soyoona: Inspired? Yeah, so I am planning to write a piece for soprano and guitar for November, and I need to finish that before August. So the piece is for the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. This is a music festival. I need to write a piece and then work with performers in that festival. So that piece will be for soprano and guitar, but I’ll write this piece, like, based on a Korean fairy tale. There is a fairy tale called “Yeo-Woo Iyagi. It means fox sister. So it’s a little bit scary story.

There are three brothers and they had also one little sister. One day, they saw their little sister was killing and eating cows. Then they told that to their parents, but their parents wouldn’t believe, and the sons just ran away from the house. And then after a few years they had returned and they saw that sister is really actually a fox, who transformed into a human being to eat people, being unrecognized, just like a monster. At the end of the story, there is a chase. So the little brother runs away and the fox sister chases after him. I really like that dynamic tension and the chase. It’s a real Korean traditional culture because everybody in Korea knows this story. When I was a little child, I really liked this story. I know this story is very scary for little children, but I don’t know why but I was really attracted to this story. Maybe fox is a very attractive character. So I want to use this story in my music.

Shian: So the soprano will be the fox sister?

Soyoona: No,  I want to do it like a monodrama, so soprano will tell what’s happening and then soprano can be like brothers, or sister, or maybe even a cow, ‘moo’. Guitar will do some background music. It will be kind of a monodrama. But I really like writing monodrama. My opera Dear Father is kind of a monodrama, too. I really like one person telling all the stories. I think that really explores the limit of the performer.

Shian: So you are required to write all the lyrics?

Soyoona: Yeah, I need to write lyrics. But I can also ask somebody else, but I want to do it by myself. Because if I write my lyrics, I have more control over that. I can do it. I wrote the lyrics for Dear Father by myself and it’s doable.

Shian: Well, thanks for today’s interview.

Soyoona: Thank you so much for having me.