Unsuk Chin

Unsuk Chin
Hangul	진은숙
Hanja	陳銀淑
Revised Romanization	Jin Eunsuk
McCune–Reischauer	Chin Ŭnsuk

Unsuk Chin (born July 14, 1961), is a South Korean composer of classical music, based in Berlin, Germany. She was awarded the Grawemeyer Award in 2004 and the Arnold Schönberg Prize in 2005.

Biography

Unsuk Chin was born in Seoul. She studied composition with Sukhi Kang at Seoul National University and won several international prizes in her early 20s. She studied with György Ligeti in Hamburg 1985-1988. Ligeti dismissed Chin's early pieces as unoriginal, which led her to stop composing for a few years. In 1988 Unsuk Chin moved to Berlin, where she worked for years as a freelance composer at the Electronic music studio of the Technical University of Berlin, realizing seven works. Her first large orchestral piece, Troerinnen, was premiered by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in 1990. In 1991, her breakthrough work Acrostic Wordplay was premiered by the Nieuw Ensemble - since then it has been performed in 15 countries in Europe, Asia and North America. Chin's collaboration with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, which has led to several commissions from the latter, started in 1994 with Fantaisie mecanique. Since 1995, Unsuk Chin is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes. In 1999, Chin began an artistic collaboration with Kent Nagano, who has since premiered five of her works.

Chin's Violin Concerto, for which she was awarded the Grawemeyer, was premiered in 2002 by Viviane Hagner. Since then it has been programmed in Europe, Asia and North America, and performed, among others, by Christian Tetzlaff, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Simon Rattle in 2005.

Unsuk Chin's works have been performed by conductors such as Kent Nagano, Simon Rattle, Gustavo Dudamel, Neeme Järvi, Peter Eötvös, David Robertson and George Benjamin as well as by leading orchestras and ensembles. Commissioners include the Kronos Quartet, Radio France, the BBC, the London Sinfonietta, South Bank Centre, Los Angeles Opera, IRCAM and the Bavarian State Opera. Chin's music has been highlighted at major music festivals such as Festival Musica in Strasbourg or Settembre Musica in Italy.

2001/2002 Unsuk Chin was appointed composer-in-residence at Deutschen Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; since 2006 she holds the position of Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra's composer-in-residence and Artistic Director of its Contemporary Music Series.

2007 Chin's first opera Alice in Wonderland was premiered at Bavarian State Opera.

Unsuk Chin was a featured composer in the 2009 Suntory Summer Festival in Tokyo which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Suntory Music Foundation. The festival culminated with the world premiere of Šu, a concerto for Chinese sheng and orchestra. The work was commissioned by Suntory Hall International Programme, ZaterdagMatinée, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Essen Philharmonie, and was composed for sheng virtuoso Wu Wei. The world premiere on 28 August featured the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kazuyoshi Akiyama.^[1]

Awards and recognition

• 1984 International Rostrum of Composers for the chamber music work Gestalten
• 1985 First Prize of Gaudeamus Foundation for Spektra
• 1993 First Prize at the Contest for Orchestra Works to Commemorate the Semicentennial for the Tokyo Government
• 1997 First Prize for Contemporary Piano Music at the Concours International de Piano d'Orléans for the Piano Studies Nos. 2-4
• 1999 First Prize at Concours Internationaux de Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges for Xi
• 2004 Grawemeyer Award for Violin Concerto
• 2005 Arnold Schönberg Prize

Works

Unsuk Chin doesn't regard her music as belonging to any specific culture.^[2] Chin names Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Anton Webern, Iannis Xenakis, and György Ligeti,^[3] among others, as 20th century composers of special importance for her. Chin regards her working experience with Electronic music and her preoccupation with Balinese Gamelan as influential for her work. The colour of her music might perhaps be explained through Chin's affinity for non-European music. However, Chin has also clearly been influenced by musical modernism.^{[citation needed]} In her orchestral work Miroirs des temps Chin has also used compositional concepts of Medieval composers, such as Machaut and Ciconia, by employing and evolving techniques such as musical palindromes and crab canons.

Characteristic for Unsuk Chin's music is a fascination with virtuosity, which is reflected in the difficulty of her works. Virtuosity is an important feature also in Chin's electronic pieces such as Gradus ad infinitum for 8 pianos. In general, Chin doesn't prefer to make a strong distinction between electronic and instrumental music.^{[citation needed]} A dominant aspect of Chin's work is playfulness. In some pieces, theatrical actions are employed: e.g. in Allegro ma non troppo for percussion and tape, in Cantatrix Sopranica for voices and ensemble and in Double Bind? for violin and electronics.^{[citation needed]}

The texts of Chin's vocal music are often based on experimental poetry, and occasionally they are self-referential, employing techniques such as acrostics, anagrams and palindromes, all of which are also reflected in the compositional structure.^{[citation needed]} Consequently, Chin has set music to poems by writers such as Inger Christensen, Harry Matthews, Gerhard Rühm or Unica Zürn into music, and the title of Cantatrix Sopranica is derived from a Nonsens treatise by Georges Perec. However, in Kalá Chin has also composed works with less experimental texts by writers such as Gunnar Ekelöf, Paavo Haavikko, and Arthur Rimbaud, and Troerinnen is based on a play by Euripides.

Playful aspects are dominant also in Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland, which is based on Lewis Carroll's classic. The opera's libretto was written by David Henry Hwang and the composer. The Munich production, which has been released on DVD by Unitel, was directed by Achim Freyer, and it was selected 'Premiere of the Year' by an international critics' poll, which was conducted in 2007 by the German opera magazine "Opernwelt".^{[citation needed]}

Quotations

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. ~ Unsuk Chin^[4]

List of works (selection)

• Troerinnen (1986/1990) for 3 sopranos, women's choir und orchestra, after Euripides
• Gradus ad Infinitum for 8 pianos (1989/1990) for tape
• Akrostichon-Wortspiel (1991/93) for soprano and ensemble
• Fantaisie mécanique (1994/1997) für trumpet, trombone, two percussions and piano
• Piano Studies (1995-)
• ParaMetaString (1995) for string quartet and electronics
• Piano Concerto (1996-97)
• Xi (1998) for ensemble and electronics
• Miroirs des temps (1999/2000) for 4 singers and orchestra
• Kalá (2000-01) for soprano, bass, mixed choir and orchestra
• Violin concerto (2001)
• Double Concerto for piano, percussion and ensemble (2002)
• snagS&Snarls for soprano and orchestra (2004)
• Cantatrix Sopranica für two sopranos, countertenor and ensemble (2005)
• Double Bind? for violin and live electronics (2006-7)
• Alice in Wonderland (Opera; 2004-2007)
• Rocaná for orchestra (2008)
• Cello Concerto (2009)
• Šu for sheng and orchestra (2009)
• Gougalōn. Scenes from a Street Theater for Ensemble (2009)

Recordings

• Unsuk Chin: Akrostichon – Wortspiel. Ensemble Intercontemporain. CD. Deutsche Grammophon, 2005
• Unsuk Chin: Alice in Wonderland. Bayerische Staatsoper, Kent Nagano. DVD. Unitel, 2008
• Allegro ma non troppo. In: Fifty Years Studio TU Berlin. EMF Media, DVD 054, 2008
• "Rocanà, Violin Concerto". Viviane Hagner, Kent Nagano, Montreal Symphony Orchestra. CD. Analekta, 2009.
• Cantatrix Sopranica. In:Sprechgesänge - Speech Songs. musikFabrik, Stefan Asbury. CD. Wergo, 2010.

Notes

1. ^ Unsuk Chin: Premieres on Three Continents
2. ^ Ordnung, Chaos and Computer: Die Komponistin Unsuk Chin
3. ^ Unsuk Chin
4. ^ Unsuk Chin @ Boosey & Hawkes

External links

• Portrait of the composer
• Boosey & Hawkes: Unsuk Chin Website of the composer
• Paul Griffiths: An introduction to the music of Unsuk Chin
• Hanno Ehrler: Ordnung, Chaos und Computer – Die Komponistin Unsuk Chin
• Arnold Whittall: Unsuk Chin in focus: Meditations & mechanics
• Interview with the composer
• (French) A biography of Unsuk Chin, from IRCAM's website.

Persondata
Name	Chin, Unsuk
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	July 14, 1961
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death