
There's more to Korean music than K-Pop. Young composers show how in L.A. Phil's Seoul Festival
Already at 21, Yunchan Lim, winner of the 2018 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, has reached superstar status. Myung-Whun Chung, whose conducting career began as an assistant to Carlo Maria Giulini at the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1977, was just selected, over a veteran Italian conductor, to head La Scala in Milan with the blessing of Italy's nationalist president, Giorgia Meloni.
And now the L.A. Phil has turned to the South Korean capital for an eight-day Seoul Festival as a follow-up to its revelatory Reykjavik and Mexico City festivals. Unsuk Chin, today's best-known Korean composer, is the curator.
She is, in fact, today's only Korean composer who's well known internationally.
Despite a seeming wealth of renowned performers, Korea remains a musically mysterious land. Most of what happens, even now, in Seoul's classical music scene doesn't roam far from Seoul. The mostly youngish composers and performers in the first L.A. Phil festival event, an exceptional Green Umbrella concert of new music at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday night, were all discoveries.
Korean music is a discovery for much of the world. But California does have a head start. Chin, whose music has a visceral immediacy, has long fit in to L.A., championed by Kent Nagano at Los Angeles Opera and by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel and Susanna Mälkki at the L.A. Phil. Moreover, ancient Korean court music and its instruments became an obsession with the echt-California composer Lou Harrison. Its noble gentility has been subtly adding to the DNA of the California sound.
Only two Korean composers before Chin have made an indelible impression on the world stage, and both, as is Chin, became avant-gardist emigres. As outsiders, they have striking relevance.
Isang Yun ((1917–1995) had a shocking career. A brilliant pioneering composer who melded traditional Asian music with contemporary techniques, Yun had been briefly arrested for his participation in the Korean independence movement of the early 1940s. He fled to West Germany, where he became a prominent composer before being kidnapped and returned to Korea. Imprisoned, tortured and threatened with a death sentence, he was eventually freed thanks to pressure from a consortium of internationally influential musicians (Igor Stravinsky, György Ligeti and Herbert von Karajan among them) and returned to West Berlin.
And then there was Nam June Paik (1932-2006). Though famed for having been the first major video artist, Paik was a classically trained pianist and composer who began his career following in Schoenberg's footsteps by writing 12-tone music. His route to video was an erratic one that began when he fell under the spell of John Cage and became one of the more outrageous members of the anarchic Fluxus art and performance movement. I once asked Paik, who taught briefly at CalArts when it opened, about whether he always considered himself a composer. He said only a yuppie — 'you know, those people who work in a bank during the day and only go to concerts at night' — would think he wasn't.
The Yun and Paik zeitgeist of going your own original and expressive sonic way while always being aware of tradition, whether embraced or rejected, pervades Chin, 63, and the generation of Korean composers who came after her and whom she has invited to the festival. Chin herself left Seoul to study with Ligeti in Europe. The Hungarian composer's music, thanks to Salonen's advocacy, is also in the L.A. blood. The orchestra has, of course, had a Ligeti festival.
For the Green Umbrella concert, Chin revealed a great range of approaches among the four exceedingly interesting next-generation composers. She also invited a dazzling array of soloists specializing in Western and Korean instruments as well as the magnificent Ensemble TIMF, which joined the L.A. Phil New Music Group. All were making debuts alongside the luminous and poetic young conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi.
In the four pieces (each about 15 minutes), Korean, European and American traditions can serve as sources for reinvention. Juri Seo's Concertino for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, given a dashing performance by pianist HieYon Choi, consists of short movements that include a jazz fughetta and Schumann-esque romanticism. Sun-Young Pahg's austerely formal 'L'autre moitié de Silence' for daegeum and ensemble featured Hong Yoo as soloist bending notes and bending time on the bamboo flute used in Korean folk and traditional music.
In Yie-Eun Chun's spritely Violin Concerto, which was commissioned by the L.A. Phil for the festival, scale-like passages got the Paganini treatment from soloist SooBeen Lee. Dongjin Bae's 'reflective — silky and rough' for standard western flute and spacey strings, another L.A. Phil commission, had an ancient feel with its silences and breathy solos played with enthralling focus by Yubeen Kim.
Chin's 'Gougalon (Scenes From a Street Theater),' which ended the program, is a riotous evocation of Hong Kong. Rather than musically reproduce street sounds and people sounds, Chin transforms them into spectacular orchestral chatter. The effect is what their joy must sound like, what their meals must sound like, what their walking and talking and laughing and crying must sound like in a language you don't understand because exhilaration isn't language.
All of this is music by distinct personalities, each striving for something sonically personal. Musically mixing East and West dispenses with regulations when crossing borders and becomes an an act of individuality and often resistance. Chun's do-re-me scales become cockeyed before you grasp what's happening. Bae's silky flute, when rough underneath, evoke the feeling you might get when taking a break from Bach an instant before the world's most compelling composer overtakes your own senses.
The conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi favors transparency and sensuality at the same time with expressive gestures that seem to magically mold sound. Each piece had different instrumental combinations involving both L.A. Phil and TIMF players. Everything worked.
The festival continues with weekend orchestra concerts featuring different mixes of four more new Korean scores commissioned by the L.A. Phil, Chin's 2014 Clarinet Concerto and a pair of Brahms concertos. A chamber music concert with works by Schumann and Brahms played by Korean musicians is the closing event Tuesday.
Meanwhile, for a better idea of what Unsuk Chin is up to, last month in Hamburg Kent Nagano conducted the premiere of her new opera, 'The Dark Side of the Moon.' It is a philosophical reflection on the relationship between quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung that profoundly reflects how ideas and traditions interact. It can be watched on YouTube.
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12 hours ago
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25 Target Products You'll Want For Your Dorm
A pack of clear white string lights so you can cultivate the most cozy atmosphere you ever did see, earning you endless compliments from all room visitors while making your space feel like a magical fairy tale forest even on the dullest of days. Promising review: "I love the light color of these. They are the perfect warm glow, and I love the white cord. I have them in a few different rooms in the house, and they are wonderful! Having bought them over and over, occasionally I will get a strand that burns out a little faster, but at 10 bucks for two strands, I can't complain. They are wonderful." —AmeliaPrice: $10 A space-saving K-Mini Keurig perfect for those mornings (and there likely will be many) when you don't feel like trekking to the on-campus cafe or dining hall for a quick cup of Joe or tea. Plus, honestly, the smell of fresh-brewing coffee helps me wake up in the morning, and it definitely did for my 8 a.m. classes. Promising review: "I absolutely love this Keurig. 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New York Post
18 hours ago
- New York Post
Michael Jackson's dirty stage sock sells for nearly $9K at French auction
A dirty white sock once worn by the King of Pop has moonwalked its way back into the spotlight. The rhinestone-covered sock, worn by Michael Jackson during a 1997 show in the city of Nîmes, sold Wednesday for €7,688 — about $8,911 — at an auction house in southern France. The off-white stained sock, originally white and studded with crystal rhinestones, was discovered by a technician backstage after Jackson's HIStory World Tour performance. The sock was then preserved in a frame for 28 years, according to a French auctioneer. Advertisement A rhinestone-covered sock worn by Michael Jackson during a 1997 concert in France just sold for nearly $9,000 at an auction in France. Iviore France 'It really is an exceptional object — even a cult one for Michael Jackson fans,' auctioneer Aurore Illy told AFP. The sock was worn during Jackson's tour, which hit 35 countries and included 82 shows. Footage from it shows him performing 'Billie Jean' in the sparkling footwear. Advertisement Auctioneers had estimated the item to be between €3,000 and €4,000, but it nearly doubled expectations. Though Jackson's legacy remains controversial due to longstanding child molestation allegations — which he and his estate denied — the market for his memorabilia continues to thrive. The off-white, stained sock was worn during Jackson's HIStory World Tour, which hit 35 countries and included 82 shows. WireImage A Macau casino shelled out $350,000 in 2009 for the glittery glove he wore during his first televised moonwalk in 1983. Advertisement In 2023, a Paris buyer paid over $80,000 for a fedora Jackson wore before that same performance. Months later, a black-and-white leather jacket from his 1984 Pepsi ad sold for $306,000. Jackson died in 2009 at age 50 from a fatal drug overdose.