Vocal/Stage works

What strange things could you imagine from a musician's solo recital? Would it be fun to invade the concert and start criticizing who expects an academic degree?

Nun’s dance or Seung-mu(승무) is a traditional Korean dance, performed by a solo female dancer who dressed like a Buddhist nun. Although not an official part of the Buddhist ritual, this dance is considered to symbolize the process from mortal suffering to enlightenment.

While Chi-hun Cho (1920-1968), a Korean poet illustrates its elegance and beauty, his poem also features an unusual type of passion, “the passion for submission.” Her motion is elegant and refined, but her mind is full of agony and desire for liberation from her sufferings. Although the dance is full of artistic beauty, she stands away from such earthly matters. In the end, her strong passion is condensed and sublimated as a peaceful prayer. This whole process is represented by the timbral and motivic contrast and eventual reconciliation between the choir and the solo soprano voice. 

The composer has recreated traditional yet satiric pieces from fairy tales and children's songs. The five small songs in this cycle can be defined as five signs of the composer's "spoiled regression" himself, who is overly grown to be naive.

The first song, The Last Dew came from The Ass and the Grasshopper by Aesop: The Ass eats nothing but dew to mimic the grasshopper's voice, and shortly afterward died of hunger. The composer changed just "one" element of this story, replacing the original lesson "Know yourself" with something odd. 

The second song, Run Rabbit came from Run rabbit run by Noel Gay, sung by Flanagan & Allen. The lyric of this song was changed to mock the Luftwaffe (German air force in WWII), especially in the Battle of Britain (A scene in the movie "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" depicts this history of the song.) The composer concentrated on how adults manipulated a children's song and changed its lyrics and harmony to the odd military style. 

Next, The Revolutionary Potato is a parody of Daehongdan Potato, a North Korean children's song. The song boasts a local specialty, the Big Potato, and also plays a role as propaganda highlighting the grace of the "General". There are many facts that make a huge gap between this song and reality. First, In the North Korean countryside, where "white rice" is a rarity, they're trying to replace rice with potatoes. Of course, the taste of potatoes is different from genuine rice. Also, All farmers in Daehongdan County planted potatoes to meet the quota in the dictatorial regime. Finally, the song praises the infallible guidance of General Kim, which is also impossible. This reality makes an odd contrast against the cheerful melody and bright lyrics of the original song, creating irony. This irony captivated me, led me to tweak the lyrics, and tried to express this irony with eerie major chords. 

Number Lullaby, the fourth song, was inspired by The Number Song which was a Korean big hit in the '00s, my childhood years. In this number song, every sentence starts with numbers, counting up. Contrary to that, the numbers are at the end of each sentence and also count down from ten to one. Also, these numbers are Korean; I put English words similar to Korean numbers. Therefore, the lyrics of this song has two meaning to those who understand both English and Korean. The lyrics itself does not have any context, rather just borrow their sound. 

You're all pigs, the last song, came from Piggybook by Anthony Browne, a UK writer for children. In this book, the mother of a family does all chores while the rest do nothing. So with complaints, she shouted to them "Pigs!" And later, surprisingly, her spouse and children became real pigs. This short story recalls my childhood, and also my present days as an adult. Even now, maybe I am becoming a pig every moment.