My work “Ten Steps” (십리-아리랑 변주곡) for piano and electronic (2-Channels) will be premiered on October 30th at the Seoul International Music Festival SICMF 2020 in Seoul, South Korea. The KEAMS (Korea Electro-Acoustic Music Society) organizes this festival yearly.
Eun Young Son will perform my work the next October 30th, 2020 (7:30 PM) in the 3rd concert of the festival at the Jayu Theater in Seoul Arts Center (Seoul, South Korea). Eun Young graduated (KA, KE) from the Hochschule für Musik “Carl Maria von Weber” in Dresden (Germany). She has won several international awards like the American Protege (1st) or the IBLA Grand Prize (3rd). Her career has taken an international course with performances at international venues like the Carnegie Hall (New York), the Smetana Hall (Czech Republic) or the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). She is also the author of the book “Music Education for Early Childhood”. Nowadays she is lecturer at the Chongshin University in Seoul (South Korea).
Ten Steps (십리) is a work inspired by the Korean song “Arirang”. The name “variation” refers more to a free interpretation of the sensations that the song inspires than to the classic concept that this word evokes. The piano is a solitary walker in an environment that, more than interacting, directs and controls him. “after ten steps…” the piano and electronics dissolve into a single element. Together, they still have a long way to go. The sound structure of this work is based on the tonal material of the song Arirang. The material for the electronic part comes from various sources: sounds extracted from traditional Korean music, piano sounds, purely synthetic sounds…
The material has been worked through various transformations and at the end compiled in a fluid sound. The panorama plays an essential role in the design of the work. The space is an element that is composed in the same degree as the sound pitch or the rhythm. No movement takes place without the perception of the space around it. Ten steps are ten spaces.
The Seoul International Computer Music Festival (SICMF) is one of the biggest electro-acoustic music festivals in Asia, and also internationally well-known. Many kinds of ongoing research activities including electro-acoustic music, new electronic instruments and multimedia-based works have been presented annually since 1994. We have invited special composers or performers for the festival such as, Meta Duo, GRAME, INA-GRM, CCRMA, Ensemble Aventure, DEGEM.
PROGRAM
Liona Kuo – Untitled: Sigh
Shu-Huang Chen – Sonic Youth
Clovis McEvoy – Pillars of Introspection
Sungah Shin – Looping Movements
Douglas Hedwig – TranSonic Awakenings in D
Michele Cheng – Doyennes’ Diaries
Marko Ciciliani – Gunned Down (with spoiler)
Jorge García del Valle Méndez – Ten Steps (십리)
Jihyun Kim – Differences