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Violinist Hyeyung Sol Yoon performs the World Premiere of Texu Kim's Convivio (2023) and J.S. Bach's Adagio and Fugue from Sonata No. 3 in C Major at UMass Fine Arts Center's Codemaker Series. Notes by Texu Kim: Convivio (2023) for solo violin addresses the evolution and diaspora of heritage in two sections, incorporating first notes from the fugue of Bach’s violin sonata No.3 as symbolic and musical material. The first section portrays the process of music being generated from some origins of music: breathing and moving. Next, they transform into various sounds to become the ‘material.’ The material appears in various forms in the second movement, including avant-garde or folk music. Symbolizing other possible descendants of the material that have not been embraced by mainstream history, they contest the hierarchy and celebrate their imaginary coexistence – hence the title, Convivio, referring to a feast or living together. Tonight’s program includes the world premiere of Convivio, interwoven with two movements from Bach’s violin sonata mentioned above. It will start with Bach’s Adagio movement, which would typically serve as the prelude to the fugue. Then, Convivio’s first movement follows as if traveling the inside the performer to join the birth and journey of music, leading to the fugue. The second part of Convivio interjects Bach’s fugue by bursting after the fugue’s first section, defying the tradition and creating tension. After Bach’s subject metamorphoses into various styles, representing the diaspora: how would the same melody evolve if isolated in different cultures or contexts? The music returns to the second half of Bach’s fugue. This provocative or rebellious experiment is not just to challenge the tradition but to offer a fresh perspective to live with the legacy in the post-post-modern era we live in. It is also related to my experiences as an Asian composer who primarily works in Western music, navigating to find where I fit in this tradition. Convivio was commissioned by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center's Asian and Asian American Arts and Culture Program and is dedicated to violinist Hyeyung Yoon.

Originally presented and live-streamed by Roulette Intermedium on November 16th, 2020 - https://roulette.org/event/anjna-swaminathan-rivers-above-floods-below/ Anandham: A Homecoming was commissioned by Gabriela Lena Frank's Creative Academy of Music and premiered at Roulette Intermedium by violinist Hyeyung Sol Yoon. “The borders of bioregions are not only impossible to define; they are permeable. […] I remember that not only is my mother an immigrant, but that there is something immigrant about the air I breathe, the water I drink, the carbon in my bones, and the thoughts in my mind.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing Odell’s words offer a reflection on the meteorological phenomenon of “atmospheric rivers,” large bodies of water which collect in the atmosphere above the tropics and later rain down in a different place entirely. Anjna Swaminathan’s Anandham: A Homecoming considers the possibility that much like these bodies of celestial water, our homes, too, are not stationary, but exist in the very possibility of our migration. Our global collective relies on a memory of homelands that have been colonized, spliced, and severed time and time again, but while we are so often nostalgic for a home that is broken, we more easily find community in new lands that don’t feel beholden to the same burdens of conflict and status quo. Much like the rivers brewing and creating movements above, Swaminathan considers the massive rivers of protestors who have flooded the streets against injustice in recent months. What if this, too, is a deluge of cosmic importance? Musically, Anandham: A Homecoming holds these mass movements in the body of a solo violinist. We journey with the violin through its own story of immigration, colonization, and subversion. Informed by Swaminathan’s training in western classical, Carnatic and Hindustani violin, her guru M. S. Gopalakrishnan’s uncanny ability to mold into and in between all three, as well as the historic effects of British colonization on the oral traditions of India, this work expresses the shared migration story of musics, communities, waters, activists, the violinist, and the composer herself.

Performance 3 - Atacameños for Solo Violin: Join professional violinist Hyeyung Yoon as she performs Part III of "Atacameños for Solo Violin," a piece composed by Greg Simon, assistant professor of composition at the Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Watch as Hyeyung's performance shifts between a live audience presentation and a private in-studio session.