Composer and cellist Ha-Yang Kim joined SMO’s co-Artistic Director Jérémy Jolley on OPEN SCORE broadcast on Sunday February 28th. Kim shared her musical path and details on her new piece the day is burnt, the night is calm. Here’s a transcription of her thoughts on the new work commissioned by SMO.
For information about this concert- Click Here!
Almost any piece of music if I think about it as a performer, improvisor, or a composer, I want to start from a place of stillness and nothing. There is something very important about being in this place of stillness. It is part of something that I am asking everyone to do, to participate in. Active listening and being very present requires a tremendous amount of focus and integrity. It is that intention and focus that I am interested in all of us sharing. Making music is like a ritual for me, and I hold it and carry it in that way, even if I am an audience member. The sense of this whole intense year feels like the world has been on fire. How do we find stillness amidst this fire? How do we find our peace? How do we find that space that we can return to or remember the essence of who we are?
FORM
It is a long-form piece. It is pulseless, meterless, and the whole piece is about revealing the scale. It starts with the lowest fundamental in the double bass, and then we have different octave iterations for the different instruments. Then it goes through the scale and reveals the different intervallic and harmonic chordal colors of this beautiful system. The piece evolves over a long period of time and invites everyone to be deeply listening to the different colors.
The passing of time and duration of it is also an important feature. It is long and there are a lot of held notes, because I am working with very small incremental intervals. There will be beating, and especially because there are strings, different kinds of overtones will emerge, and the electronics will be enhancing that. We are working right now with spectral and granular synthesis. It is this architectural, three-dimensional space and the beauty of that revealing itself to us. That whole experience and process is very much like a sitting meditation, except we are working with frequencies.
SCORE
I just give parameters in terms of choices. I have a group of numbers or pitches that can be played, then I have another two lines with different intervallic material and melodic fragments that keeps us moving together as a herd. Everything else is indeterminate in the sense of duration and who plays what when, other than that we are moving together through this system. So I don’t know what someone is going to play, which enforces a letting go and real active, attentive listening. Whatever I do is going to be in response to whatever is happening at that moment. We are going to be collectively engaging in this process together, and we will be in a different place than from when we started. – Ha-Yang Kim, transcribed by Mina Esary.
Watch the complete conversation – Click Here!