Unsuk Chin (born 1961)
Unsuk Chin was born in Seoul, South Korea, and discovered piano at the age of 2 or 3. By the time she was 8 she was already earning money by playing piano at weddings. Around the age of 13, she decided she wanted to be a composer.
In her early 20’s Unsuk Chin moved to Hamburg and studied with György Ligeti. She has also cited Bartók, Debussy, Stravinsky, Webern, and Xenakis as influences. She worked with electronic music early in her career and has taken inspiration from Balinese gamelan music.
Between 2004 and 2007 Unsuk Chin composed an opera of Alice in Wonderland, collaborating on the English-language libretto with playwright David Henry Hwang. A production by the Bavarian State Opera conducted by Kent Nagano is available on DVD and Blu-ray.
She has said:
My music is a reflection of my dreams. I try to render into music the visions of immense light and of an incredible magnificence of colours that I see in all my dreams, a play of light and colours floating through the room and at the same time forming a fluid sound sculpture. Its beauty is very abstract and remote, but it is for these very qualities that it addresses the emotions and can communicate joy and warmth.
She has composed concertos for piano, violin, cello, clarinet, percussion, and the sheng, a Chinese polyphonic free-reed instrument. This is her Sheng Concerto from 2009. Following the performance, the soloist Wu Wei plays an encore further demonstrating the sounds of the instrument.
This is a work for chamber orchestra entitled Gougalōn and was composed between 2009 – 2011:
The French titles of the movements indicate that it is a a portrayal of street theatre scenes, including a lamentation of a bald dancer, and a dance around the barracks.