Photo: Lucy Woods/The Olaf Messenger
Assistant Professor of Music April Ryun Kim ’11 flashed a smile on Urness Recital Hall’s stage with other professional musicians at the Korean Composers’ Festival concluding the two-day festival with the third and final concert of the event.
Kim’s purpose for organizing this festival was to “highlight and feature works by Korean, Korean American, and Korean Diaspora composers from the past and present.” All of the featured composers are currently living.
“If you look at performances, Asian American or Asian composers in general are less of a percentage that is highlighted,” Kim said. A statistic from Piano Inspires Magazine that has stuck with Kim states that between 2021 and 2022, “only 1.77 percent of scheduled pieces in concert halls were composed by Asian composers.”
“This is one of the very few festivals or conferences that exclusively highlight only Korean composers,” Kim said. This festival then makes St. Olaf College and the town of Northfield one of the first places outside of Korea to celebrate the country’s many composers.
Many people worked behind the scenes to support the event and run its various aspects. Kim gathered speakers for afternoon lectures “through word-of-mouth and asking colleagues,” and the presentations and performers were chosen through a submission proposal process. “We had a review committee of several music faculty members who generously offered their time to go through the applications and listen to the recordings and proposal submissions,” Kim said.
The first concert on Sept. 23 started strong with a boom of thunder from the night as Shinparam, a Korean-influenced drumming group based in the Twin Cities, took the stage. While they performed “Samdo Samulnori,” lightning flashed through the stained glass windows of Boe Chapel as the janggu and buk drums as well as the jing and kkwaenggwari gongs beat polyrhythms into the audience’s chest.
Pieces following the opening included “Doraji,” arranged by Yoojin Muhn and performed by St. Olaf’s Manitou Choir, and “Ariaria” — meaning “Aching Song” — for violin and piano by Jiyoun Chung, a close friend of Kim, which was a dedication to the ones who have lost their lives or loved ones to gun violence. There were two pieces including opera singing: “Endeavor,” a soprano voice, trumpet, and piano trio by HyeKyung Lee, and “Three Songs of Longing,” a piano and mezzo-soprano voice duet by Yeon Jun Kim, Dong Jin Kim, and Young-Sharp Choi. The final piece of the concert was “Pahdo” — meaning “Ocean Wave” — by Texu Kim, an organ piece performed by St. Olaf’s Catherine Rodland.
The next two back-to-back concerts were held in the Urness Recital Hall on Sept. 24. Isaac Kitange ’27, who attended the second concert, enjoyed “how raw [the concert] felt” as well as “how the musical themes were portrayed with such small instrumentation.”
St. Olaf Band’s Morgan Ely ’26 performed the first piece of the second concert, “Arirang,” a marimba piece by Soomin Kim. “I had a lot of fun learning such an elaborate and expressive piece,” Ely said. “It was great to work with a professional composer and be able to play alongside such high level musicians.”
April Kim performed “Scissors: Fantasia Toccata,” a piano piece she commissioned Jiyoun Chung to write. “We were at University of Missouri Kansas City together. She was doing her doctorate in composition, and I was doing it in piano,” Kim said. This piece recreates the sounds of Korean candy sellers who tapped their taffy scissors to the music they turned on in order to attract customers. The practice evolved to include onstage acts of completing tricks with the same type of scissors. Chung saw a video of one of these acts and used glissandos to convey the throwing and catching of scissors as well as hand crossings to replicate the technique used with the janggu drum played in the background of the candy sellers’ performances.
Another piece that incorporated Korean culture was “Pali-Pali!”by Texu Kim, which related to the busyness and fast-paced mindsets of South Koreans. The conflict between emotions of contemplation and anxiety in the violin and cello duet reflect the composer’s emotions working with a quick deadline for this commissioned piece.
Peter Markham ’27 attended the third concert and was “really captivated” by each piece. Markham also “related to the story” of “H.A.N.Y.U.N.I.M,” a violin and soprano voice duet composed and sung by Soomin Kim. This piece was a letter to Soomin Kim’s grandmother who has passed away.
The final piece of the festival, “Freestyle Battle” by Jiyoun Chung, was performed by the 10th Wave Chamber Collective Musicians, a music group based in the Twin Cities dedicated to highlighting living composers and composers of color. This violin, cello, clarinet, and piano quartet embodies BBoy breakdancing battles, which reminded Chung of the togetherness of chamber music.
Many composers traveled to St. Olaf College to watch their pieces performed in Boe Chapel and Urness Recital Hall, including Chung, who was “forever grateful” to have three of her pieces showcased at this festival and “so honored” to be surrounded by “incredible musicians” and “supportive students.”
Henry Dorn, director of the St. Olaf Band and a composer himself, attended the second concert. “I’m not sure there is anything more helpful a composer can do to inform their practice or gain inspiration/ideas than to observe what other composers do,” Dorn said. “This is further amplified when taking in art that is unlike something that’s a part of your own wheelhouse.”
There was another message to send to these audiences. “There is a certain kind of sound that is expected from one ethnic group,” Kim said. “Another thing that’s important for me is to showcase that there is so much more inspiration and influence that one group of ethnicity is offering.” Each piece following the one performed beforehand solidified the truth of the variety Korean composers have to offer. Although many pieces contained traditional influence, there were also ones that strayed from it as well as hybrids of Western and Korean musical elements. The smiling faces of the audience members exiting each concert proved that these Korean composers easily touched all attendees with their unique pieces in a single weekend.
