Unsuk Chin

After studying composition at Seoul National University, she went to Hamburg to become a pupil of the great Hungarian composer György Ligeti at the Hochschüle für Musik und Theater. In a recent interview with the New York Times, she recalled that she had, until then, attempted to imitate the avant-garde style that dominated western contemporary music, but that Ligeti told her this was “verboten” (forbidden).

“At that time I already had had success in two important international competitions,” Chin has said (in an interview for US Asians). “But when I showed him these prize-winning pieces, he would only shake his head and say: ‘Throw all this away. There is nothing original in these pieces.’ This was very hard, though I somehow knew myself that I hadn't found my own voice...”

The experience seems to have brought on a compositional crisis – after which a move to Berlin to work at the electronic studio of the Technical University gradually sparked her creativity back into action. In 2004 she won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for her Violin Concerto: it propelled her into the international limelight in earnest.

Chin’s earliest influences included, besides music in church, the traditional folk music of Korea, heard on the streets of Seoul, and the prevailing background of American pop music on the radio. More recent ones have been as varied as the Balinese gamelan and Conlon Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano. Such eclectic worlds give her music a base involving a huge breadth of references on which she often draws – for instance, to make ironic points or to highlight humorous strands – but from which her own voice stands distinct. Her sense of humour is a vital component, from the dazzling hilarity of her opera Alice in Wonderland to the way she uses the solo instrument plus greatly expanded percussion section in her Piano Concerto.

Šu for Sheng and Orchestra is a particularly fine example of Chin’s ability to meld many different influences into a unique and quirky creation that goes far beyond the sum of its parts. The Sheng is a type of Chinese mouth-organ that can produce many strands of sound at the same time. Chin uses it to evoke – on acoustic instruments – the type of effects that the European avant-garde often sought with electronic instruments. Elements of this beautifully sculpted 21-minute piece represent virtually a double mirror between electronic and traditional means of making music.