‘Earl.' Highlights A Musical Genius Too Few Have Heard Of

Forbes

6 hours ago

Earl Kim learned to play the piano when he was given free lessons by a church organist.
Ty Kim first heard about Earl Kim (no relation) through what he describes as 'a terrible pitch.' The Emmy Award-winning storyteller was approached because he previously filmed a documentary on cellist Lynn Harrell and his 60-year career. Lynn Harrell: A Cellist's Life featured interviews with Yo-Yo Ma, John Williams, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Itzhak Perlman and André Previn. Those trying to pitch the film that would eventually become Earl. described it as a 'story about someone who is no longer alive, never gave interviews and you've probably never heard of his music."
'I said, that is the worst pitch I've ever heard in my life,' said Ty. 'I got interested when I started doing my own research. I'm a former 60 Minutes journalist. I found out that Earl Kim served as a combat intelligence officer and that he flew over Nagasaki 24 hours after the atomic bomb was dropped. I thought, who is this man? Why would he do that? That's such a curious individual that I wanted to know more about his character.'
Then he started listening to his music.
"As an amateur cellist, I did not know anything about his music before,' said Ty. 'But what deeply touched me was the fact that this was someone who had lived many lives."
Earl's roots were humble. His is the classic American immigrant story. Before leaving Korea his mother attended Ewha Woman's University and his father was a scholar. After moving to the U.S. his father picked and eventually sold vegetables. Earl learned to play the piano via free lessons given by a church organist and then studied with a touring pianist in Los Angeles. He went on to study with composer Arnold Schoenberg at UCLA, then transferred to UC Berkeley. Then Earl went to war, serving as a combat intelligence officer.
'His career was interrupted by World War II," said Ty. "When he returned from the war, he stood up to McCarthyism and got fired by UC Berkeley.'
Ty Kim became fascinated by the many lives that Earl King lived.
A self-described late bloomer, Ty also appreciates Earl's story because he started composing later in life. From 1952 to 1967 Earl taught music at Princeton, then he taught at Harvard until 1990 when he retired. Earl created various vocal and music theater works, many of which use texts by Samuel Beckett. His works include Exercises en Route, Narratives, Eh Joe and the one-act opera Footfalls. He acquired loyal friends and famous collaborators throughout the music industry, but was never interested in publicity. As a result there wasn't much information to create a documentary with.
'I became more and more intrigued and as a narrative it was magnificent,' said Ty. "But it wasn't easy. It was really challenging to do a story about a guy that there were only a few photographs of that I unearthed from family members. How do you tell the story and not make it into a collection of soundbites strung together about somebody?'
Eventually some long lost interviews surfaced and that was when Ty knew he could make his documentary, aptly titled Earl. For background Ty interviewed 35 sources on three continents, including legendary violinist Itzahk Perlman, who recorded Earl's violin concerto with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The memories of those whose lives Earl touched were often emotional. Yes, he was a great composer, they reiterated, but he had a way of reaching out to them emotionally. He was also a moral and fearless person, standing up to McCarthy, which cost him his teaching job at UC Berkeley. As a result of his experiences during the war he co-founded and served on Musicians Against Nuclear Arms.
'Well, Earl was a prodigy on the piano,' said Ty. 'So many of them were very impressed by the language of the music without words, what he could do on the keyboard with singers like Dawn Upshaw, who won a Grammy or Karol Bennett, who's in the film. And then there are the violinists. This is my second film with Itzahk Perlman, who is one of the funniest people. I just love his sense of humor.'
If Earl liked you he wanted to feed you.
'Mr. Perlman called Earl a foodaholic," said Ty. "You have this person who loved to entertain and create this kind of a parlor environment with young artists, with composers. And they quickly realized they were with somebody accessible and gentle. The way he taught was so inclusive. So, people loved him. They still think of him as being alive now, even though we lost him in 1998 to lung cancer. His presence is so deeply personal in a way, aristocratic, restrained, like the notes he wrote, he valued economy, precision, quietude, modesty of statement, and did not seek publicity. That's spareness of speaking on his behalf was probably the reason he and Samuel Beckett got along so well when he went to visit Mr. Beckett in Paris.'
Creating pieces that were meant to be played on a small scale limited the number of people who knew about him.
'There was not a tremendous volume of pieces that he wrote,' said Ty. 'But what he wrote were brilliant pieces, largely geared toward the chamber music genre, if you will. Writing for the big orchestras was not what he wanted to do. Here's somebody somewhat undiscovered by the general public at large, but beloved by contemporary and chamber music circles. They look at his music as something that's innovative, brash, bold, and significant.'
Earl's music is also haunting, with echoes of traditional Korean music. He was raised in an environment where Korean music was played, where there was singing in Korean, where there were traditional instruments being played, but that's not the only music he was exposed to as a child. His mother loved the opera and would cry when listening to it on the radio.
"He often said that he'd never thought of himself as a Korean composer," said Ty. "He thought of himself as a composer.'
The documentary Earl., with a period at the end of the title, opened at the New York Asian Film Festival and Ty is not sure what might happen to it next.
'We've had academic screenings at Harvard, Princeton, around the country, but we are very fortunate to be able to share something that will, I think, reach people," he said. "It's not really an art film, it's not a music film. It's a film about a guy that had the guts to dream about being an artist and came from nothing, and then rose to become a Harvard professor and to be so respected in his circle. But he's a very unique individual.'
Is that why Ty added a period to the title?
'The period is for emphasis,' said Ty. 'I didn't want to do an exclamation mark. I felt like we had to find a way to communicate something a little bit different with the title, the branding of it, maybe.'
People often ask if he is related to Earl, which he's not.
"I say, no, but I wish I were.'
Earl died in 1998. The voiceover in Earl. notes that a person dies twice. Once when they bury him in the ground and the second time when no one remembers his name. Ty wants to make sure that Earl is not forgotten.