Skokie Library - cultural performances:

1. Music with Korean Traditional Theme:
Performed by winners of the 2010 Sejong Music Competition.
Christopher Park, piano - - - - -Tae-Pyung-Ga 태평가 by Eun Young Lee
Hansuh Rhee, violin - - - - - - - - Sae-Ta-Ryung 새타령 by Eun Young Lee
Karisa Chiu, violin - - - - - - - - - - Yang San Do 양산도 by Dong-il Sheen
Jennifer Cha, violin - - - - - - - - - - JOY of Ong-He-Ya 옹해야 by Misook Kim

Korean folk song melodies are presented as piano and violin solo pieces performed by our talented young musicians. Sejong Cultural Society tries to reach out to the younger generations in US through contemporary fine arts utilizing Western media and advance awareness and understanding of Korean’s cultural heritage amongst people in the US. It is Sejong Cultural Society's hope that, through this, the rich culture behind Korea's colorful history will be accessible to people of any ethnicity and nationality while being a unique part of the larger, more familiar Western culture.


2. Korean Folk Song By Gayagum
Chicago gayagum ensemble (시카고가야금연주)
Director : Sunhee Lee
Gayagum is a traditional stringed instrument that represent the Korea.
Performers : Sunhee Lee, Myungja Hahn, Jeongsuk Heo, Jihyun Lim


3. Korean Dance
어느 봄날에: One Spring Day
Chicago Korean Dance Company – youth (시카고 어린이 한국무용단)
Art Director : Aedeok Lee
“One Spring Day” is based on the story of girls, who’s collecting flower, and boys playing together in the field on one spring day. This dance show children in Korea played in the past times such as collecting flowers, and Rock Scissor Papers.
Performers : Nancy cho, Lucy Cho, Ashley Cheon, Grace Song, Sarah Chin, Sharon Song, Lindsey Cheon, Yena song

4. Pungmul - Korean percussion (풍물놀이)
Dream Kids Pungmul Troupe (꿈꾸는 아이들 어린이 풍물단)
Director : Namhoon Kim
Dream Kids Pungmul started when a group of Korean American parents in the Chicago area decided that children needed direct experience with Korean culture and a way to participate in Korean communities. Pungmul ( Korean percussion ) was a natural because of its history, its current role in Korean communities worldwide, and its high fun factor.
Performers : Baikleem Choi, Hahrim Choi , Erin Jang, Eugene Jang, Jisahn Kim, Edward Lee


5 . Fan dance (부채춤)
Aedeok Lee Korean Dance (한국무용원) Art Director : Aedeok Lee
Fan dance is regarded as the most unique Korean traditional dance. The symbols of the Fan dance are flowers and the butterfly. This splendid dance and brilliant fans of painted blossoms shows the beauty of vivid color and the harmony of movements in a set space.
Performers : Junghee Lee, Myungja Hahn, Wanda Kim, Sophia Park, Jackie Lee.


6. Korean-pop Dance Remix
'Afterparty' from Northwestern University.
Performers : Solbee Park, Yurie Kim, Yoonjung Kim, Hyejung Han, Yunji Kang,
Dan Kim, Doh-Young Jung, Danny Cho, Daniel Zhou, John Lee

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Performance by
winners of the 2010 Sejong Music Competition
Jan 15, 2 pm
Petty Auditorium, Skokie Library, Skokie, IL

Program

Tae-Pyung-Ga (태평가) .……..……..…….….………..…..………...…………….. Eun Young Lee
Christopher Park, piano

Sae-Ta-Ryung (새타령) .….….…………….….………..…..……...……….…….. Eun Young Lee
Hansuh Rhee, violin

Yang San Do (양산도) ………..………………………..…………..…….…..……... Dong-il Sheen
Karisa Chiu, violin
Inah Chiu, piano

JOY of Ong-He-Ya (옹해야) ……......…....…..……...…….………………….…..…… Misook Kim
Jennifer Cha, violin
Inah Chiu, piano

Jennifer Eugena Cha (first place and best interpretation of Korean music, senior violin division): Jennifer, age 14, is a student of Desiree Ruhstrat at the Music Institute of Chicago.  She started playing the violin at the age of 5.  As a member of Betty Haag Academy and its Magical Strings of Youth, she performed at various local events and toured Germany and Italy for performances including performing in front of Pope at Vatican.  She has won awards and prizes from Chinese Fine Arts Society, Sejong Cultural Society and Walgreen’s National Concerto Competition including 1st place in the Junior I at the 2006 Chinese Fine Arts Society and in the Junior Division of 2008 Sejong Music Competition. 

Karisa Chiu (third place and best interpretation of Korean music, junior violin division): Eleven year old Karisa Chiu is a sixth grader at Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights.  She started the violin at the age of two and studies with her father Cornelius Chiu who is a violinist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Karisa was the first prize winner in the 2007 youth division and the 2010 junior one division in the Chinese Fine Arts Society Competition. She was awarded second place in the 2008 and 2010 primary division and the 2010 junior division in the Society of American Musicians Competition.  She has performed with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in outreach programs and in Parties of Note Concerts. Karisa is an avid soccer player with the Rolling Meadows traveling soccer team and enjoys playing the piano, reading, and playing with her dog.   
 
Christopher Park (first place and best interpretation of Korean music, senior piano division): Christopher, age 16, is a sophomore at West Lafayette High School in Indiana. He has been studying piano for ten years with Nadya Dubikovsky. He has won many competitions including the District and State levels of the Indiana Music Teachers' Association Piano Competition, 1st place of the Ruth Jamieson Piano Scholarship Competition in 2008, and second place at the World Piano Competition in the Level 10 concerto division in 2009. Subsequently he performed in the winner’s recital at Carnegie Hall in New York City. As one of the winners of the Allan Keller Concerto Competition in Lafayette he performed piano concerto with Lafayette Symphony Orchestra in 2009. He also has been studying violin with Regan Eckstein for nine years. He is the concertmaster of the Indiana All-State Orchestra. As a finalist of the WVYS concerto competition in 2010, he will perform a violin concerto with the orchestra in 2011. Christopher is the vice president of his class and on the school’s varsity tennis team and golf team.

Hansuh Rhee (first place and best interpretation of Korean music, junior violin division):
Hansuh, age 13, attends Springman Middle School in Glenview. She is a merit scholarship recipient and member of the Music Institute of Chicago’s Academy program for gifted pre-college musicians. She studies with Marko Dreher at the Music Institute of Chicago. She attended the Okemo Young Artist Festival in Ludlow, Vermont, for the past 4 years, where she studied with Marko Dreher and Dave Bowlin, and played at a master class with Nicholas DiEugenio. Hansuh has been featured on Vermont Television. Hansuh has won the concerto competition for the MIC Junior Academy Strings program and performed with them as a soloist. She has won first place in the Society of American Musicians Competition, various awards at the Music Festival in Honor of Confucius, and first place in the Music Teachers National Association in 2009 state division. Hansuh likes to draw and won first prize in the National Bus Safety Poster Contest in 2009.
 

About the Composer:

Misook Kim received her B.A. with the honor of Cum Laude from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. After finishing her “New Star Concert” sponsored by the Cho-sun Newspaper, she entered the graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin where she completed her M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in composition and the certificate of piano performance. Reviewer Mike Greenberg, writing in the San Antonio Express-News, called the composer ‘a bold and unrepentant modernist’. He also mentioned ‘each of her works presented thus far has impressed with its fearless modernism, its concision and its strong individual profile’.  Kim has also performed as a pianist in concerts of her own works from solo to larger ensemble compositions throughout the States and Korea. She has won International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) Judith Zaimont Award and the Long Island Arts Council International Composition Competition in 2007. She was a former faculty member at The University of the Incarnate Word and Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. In 2006, Kim joined the faculty at the Conservatory of Music at Wheaton College, IL.

A native of Korea, Eun Young Lee graduated from Ewha Women’s University with undergraduate and graduate degrees in Music Theory. Lee continued graduate studies with David Noon at the Manhattan School of Music. Currently she is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, where she is a recipient of the Lowell C. Wadmond Award, Doolittle Harrison Fellowship and Humanities Grant. Her teachers include Shulamit Ran, Marta Ptaszynska, Jan Radzynski, Bernard Rands, and Kotoka Suzuki. Lee has won multiple awards, including first prize for the Tsang-Houei Hsu International Music Composition Award; the 2008 Max Di Julio Prize at the Nevada Encounters of New Music Festival; Honorable Mention in Great Wall International Competition; the first regional award in the SCI/ASCAP student composition commission. She was a recipient of the MacDowell Colony and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellowships, and the Gerald Oshita Memorial Fellowship for the 2010 Djerassi Resident Artist Program. Her music has been heard through Art of the States, European Broadcasting Union, and Korean Broadcasting System programs. Prominent ensembles including the New York New Music Ensemble, eighth blackbird, Pacifica String Quartet, ALEA III, and North/South Consonance Ensemble have performed her music. Her instrumental pieces, multimedia pieces, computer music, and film scores were featured in festivals and concerts in many countries in North America, Europe and Asia.

Dong-il Sheen was born in Seoul, Korea. He was described as “a quiet revolutionary who broke the barrier of classical music” (Culture and Me magazine 2006). In a 2002 article in the New Music Composition and Critics journal, Professor Young-Han Heo of the Korean National University of Arts wrote, “Dong-il Sheen is a composer who filled the huge void in our lives with a new style of creative music. He explored music style that was ignored by other composers and now firmly established his own style.” Mr. Sheen has written music in many different styles, including western European music, traditional Korean music, children’s music, film soundtracks, and musicals. He graduated Seoul National University and received Master’s degree at the New York University Graduate School of Music. He started the new style music movement “Han-ma-dang” and “Music Composers-ma-dang.”  In 2002, Mr. Sheen collaborated with writer-illustrator Jae-soo Liu in the CD-Book “Yellow Umbrella”, which was named as one of the 10 best illustrated books by the New York Times. Japanese pianist Takako Takahashi made a CD of Mr. Sheen’s music in Japan.  He received numerous awards including the Best Young Artists of the Year award from the Korean Ministry of Culture & Tourism in 2003, and the Grand Prize of the Year in composers and conductors categories from the Korean Broadcasting Service (KBS) in 2004.  Mr. Sheen is a board member of the Association of Korean Musicians, President of the Composer’s Association (Jahk-gok-ma-dang), and Co-president of the Children’s Arts Production. Currently he is a lecturer at the Korean National University of Arts and Seoul National University Graduate School of Music.

About the Music

Tae-Pyung-Ga for solo piano: The lyric of Tae-Pyung-Ga expresses the effort to overcome mundane anguish by singing joyful tunes. This piece is arranged with the intention for students who are participating in the Sejong Music Competition, not only for the students who are participating in a competition but also for the students who can learn Korean Traditional folk tunes. This work is completed at MacDowell Colony in May 2010.

Sae-Ta-Ryung is a delightful folk tune from the Namdo province describing the songs of several types of birds and imitating their flight. This work was completed at MacDowell Colony in May 2010. 

Yang San Do for violin and piano: Yang-San-Do is a folk song from the Kyunggi Province. It originated during the late Chosun dynasty, having been sung by construction workers during the renovation of the Kyung Bok Palace in Seoul. Later on this tune was developed into a Sun Sori (folk song), sung with many variations of the verses. The rhythm of the song is in three beats. The main melody of this piece is played by violin while the piano plays only the accompaniment. This music begins with the unmodified Yang-San-Do tune to introduce the audience to the original folk song. Then the violin melody expands to a new level as it explores the melodic variations of the theme while keeping the general, upbeat feeling of the Yang-San-Do melody.

JOY of Ong-He-Ya (2008) is based on the Korean traditional folk tune, ‘Pori-Tajak Sori’, barley threshing song from Kyung-Sang Province.  The thematic elements are derived from the simple interval of a major 2nd, minor/major 3rd and perfect 4th.  These two short motivic ideas, ‘Ong-He-Ya’ and ‘Uh-Jul-Shi-Gu’, keeps repeating and developing as a call and response between violin and piano. A delightful rhythmic motif personifying Korean traditional folk-tune in different registers and instruments. Throughout the piece this simple and clear musical material interacts with a happy theme, representing the joyful and exciting Korean folk song.

7th Sejong Music Competition Winners - full list

7th Sejong Music Competition Winners Concert Program Book (PDF download)

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