A new era of immigrant stories

for Piano Quintet

I. Alpine Rainsong in the Moonlight
II. Years of Scarlet
III. Blue Silk (Everything’s a Guilty Pleasure)
IV. Han

Duration: 15:00

Program Notes

Being an immigrant has always been a big part of my identity, whether I liked it or not. It was only in recent years that I started to feel connected again to my heritage and began to engage with it. I appreciated being a part of something bigger—a history, culture, people—but with that includes a concern about their present-day issues and about where their countries are headed. I took this piece as an opportunity to further explore my Korean and Chinese heritage by studying (mostly) traditional forms of music found in those countries, and as an opportunity to read up and reflect on issues that compel their people to leave their homes.

The first movement is a nocturne partially inspired by Tibetan folk music and their often-free-spirited style of heterophony. The second movement borrows sounds from Chinese opera (mostly Peking opera), and loosely depicts a cheeky and rebellious opera group in Beijing putting on a show about the worsening abuse of human rights by the government, dedicated to the 1 million+ Uyghur Muslims in the province of Xinjiang currently detained in concentration camps.

The third movement was inspired by K-pop—how such a vibrant and enjoyable art form is confoundingly corporate, and the industry’s notorious mistreatment of their idols, reflective of South Korea’s militant work culture. (The problem of enjoying things made at the expense of workers’ well-being certainly is not unique to the K-pop industry, or to Korea, though, but rather pervades everywhere.)

The fourth movement draws inspiration from sanjo, a traditional form of Korean music involving an instrumental soloist and a percussion accompanist. Han is a concept of emotions described as a combination of grief and resentment, among others, coupled with a hint of hope or will to survive. The term emerged in Korea from its tumultuous modern history of oppression beginning from the Japanese colonization era, and pervades much of Korean art. Given the issues at hand today, most notably climate change, which disproportionately affects more vulnerable communities and nations and threatens to displace hundreds of millions of people, it seems like Han will be relevant to a far vaster population in the decades to come.

(2019-20)

Commissioned by Obsessions String Quartet with the assistance of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Edmonton Arts Council.

Honorable Mention in SOCAN Foundation’s 2021 Awards for Young Composers.