Dear friend,
While composing a piece that delves into the history surrounding my family’s immigration to the U.S., I’m finding vast inspiration from Don Mee Choi’s DMZ Colony (National Book Award 2020), a work that probes into post-war Korea from a Korean-American lens. Thanks to my parents’ move to a new home, I was given some memories from the past and have been using text from my high school research paper "Two Koreas" for my current work.
Performances this month at U. Missouri-KC and the U. Nebraska-Lincoln with pianist Karen Savage and cellist Gregory Beaver were put on hold because of a Covid case in our family. Everyone is symptom-free, albeit sad, and I'm looking forward to performing piano trios by Mathew Fuerst, Zhou Long, and Tyler White at a later time. Open space Music’s Madang Project launched with In The Works for mother artists and a creative writing workshop led by Rebecca Fischer. Check out her book and her next workshop on Feb 22.
My new website holds resources for artists as well as Asian Americans. I'm learning through the Cultural Community Benefits Principles Toolkit created by Art Change US whose mission is to reframe the national arts conversation by embracing the cultural assets of demographic change. They organized remap gatherings across the U.S., one of which I attended in 2018 and was deeply impacted by. Lastly, I want to remember Roger Tapping with you. He was a violist in the Juilliard and Takacs String Quartets and passed away a few weeks ago. The Chiara Quartet met him at the Aspen Music Festival in 2001, and he continued to coach, mentor, and perform with us for many years after. Here are words from Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist master and teacher who also left us at this time. From No Death, No Fear
This body is not me; I am not caught in this body, I am life without boundaries, I have never been born and I have never died. Over the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies, All manifests from the basis of consciousness. Since beginningless time I have always been free. Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out. Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek. So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye. Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before. We shall always be meeting again at the true source, Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.
With much love and gratitude, Hyeyung
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