Unsuk Chin
Born (1961-07-14) July 14, 1961
Seoul, South Korea
GenresContemporary classical
Occupation(s)Composer
Unsuk Chin
Hangul
Hanja
Revised RomanizationJin Eunsuk
McCune–ReischauerChin Ŭnsuk

Unsuk Chin (Korean: 진은숙 [tɕin ɯn.suk]; born July 14, 1961) is a South Korean composer of contemporary classical music, who is based in Berlin, Germany. Chin was a self-taught pianist from a young age and studied composition at Seoul National University as well as with György Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg.[1]

The recipient of numerous awards, she won the 2004 Grawemeyer Award for her Violin Concerto No. 1 and the 2010 Music Composition Prize of the Prince Pierre Foundation for the ensemble piece Gougalōn. In 2019, writers of The Guardian ranked her Cello Concerto (2009) the 11th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Andrew Clements describing it as "perhaps the most original and entertainingly disconcerting of all of [her concertos], cast in four brilliant movements that never quite conform to type".[2]

Biography

Unsuk Chin was born in Seoul, South Korea. She studied composition with Sukhi Kang at Seoul National University and won several international prizes in her early 20s. In 1985, Chin won the Gaudeamus Foundation located in Amsterdam, with her piece Spektra for three celli, which was composed for her graduation project. She also received an academic grant to study in Germany, where she moved that same year.[1] There she studied with György Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg from 1985 to 1988.[1]

In 1988, Chin worked as a freelance composer at the electronic music studio of the Technical University of Berlin, realizing seven works. Her first electronic piece was Gradus ad Infinitum, which was composed in 1989.[3] Her first large orchestral piece, Die Troerinnen (1986, rev.1990), for women's voices, was premiered by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in 1990.[4] In 1991, her breakthrough work Acrostic Wordplay was premiered by the Nieuw Ensemble. Since then, it has been performed in more than 20 countries in Europe, Asia and North America. Chin's collaboration with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, which has led to several commissions from them, started in 1994 with Fantaisie mecanique. Since 1995, Chin has been published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.[1] In 1999, Chin began an artistic collaboration with Kent Nagano, who has since premiered six of her works.

Chin's Violin Concerto No. 1 was awarded the 2004 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.[5] It was premiered in 2002 by Viviane Hagner. Since then, it has been programmed in 14 countries in Europe, Asia and North America, and performed, among others, by Christian Tetzlaff, the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle in 2005.

In 2007, she was awarded the Kyung-Ahm Prize.

Chin's works have been performed by orchestras around the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and many others. Her works have been conducted by Kent Nagano, Simon Rattle, Alan Gilbert, Gustavo Dudamel, Myung-whun Chung, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Neeme Järvi, Péter Eötvös, David Robertson and George Benjamin.[1] Chin's music has been highlighted at the 2014 Lucerne Festival, the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, the Suntory Summer Festival, the 2013 Stockholm Concert Hall's Tonsätterfestival and at Settembre Musica in Italy. In 2001/2002, she was appointed composer-in-residence at Deutschen Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

Chin was closely associated with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra from 2006 to 2017, at invitation from Myung-whun Chung, as their composer-in-residence and director of their Ars Nova Series for contemporary music, which she founded herself and in which more than 200 Korean premieres of central works of classical modernism and contemporary music were being presented. Chin later became the orchestra's artistic adviser. From 2011 to 2020, she oversaw the London-based Philharmonia Orchestra's Music of Today series at the invitation of its then chief conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.[1] Chin has been appointed Artistic Director of the Tongyeong International Music Festival from 2022 onwards.[6]

Style

Chin does not regard her music as belonging to any specific culture. Chin names Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Anton Webern, Iannis Xenakis, and György Ligeti,[7] 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. 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.

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.[3]

Consequently, Chin has set music to poems by writers such as Inger Christensen, Harry Mathews, Gerhard Rühm or Unica Zürn into music, and the title of Cantatrix Sopranica is derived from a nonsense 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. Troerinnen is based on a play by Euripides, and Le silence des Sirènes juxtaposes texts by Homer and James Joyce.

Playful aspects are dominant also in Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland, which is based on Lewis Carroll's classic of the same name. 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 conducted in 2007 by the German opera magazine Opernwelt.[8]

Some of Chin's works are influenced by extramusical associations and other art genres, such as her orchestral work Rocaná which alludes to Olafur Elíasson's installations, or her ensemble works Graffiti and cosmigimmicks, the latter of which was influenced by the art of pantomime and by Samuel Beckett.[9]

Selected works

Orchestral
Year Title
1993 Santica Ekatela for orchestra[4]
2008 Rocaná for orchestra[10]
2014 Mannequin for orchestra
2017 (rev. 2020) Chorós Chordón for orchestra
2019 SPIRA – Concerto for Orchestra[11]
2019 Frontispiece for orchestra[12]
2020 Subito con forza for orchestra
2022 Alaraph ‘Ritus des Herzschlags’ for orchestra
Concertante
Year Title
1996–97 Piano Concerto
2001 Violin Concerto No. 1[3]
2002 Double Concerto for piano, percussion and ensemble[13]
2009–13 Cello Concerto[14]
2009 Šu for sheng and orchestra[15]
2013–14 Clarinet Concerto
2020–21 Violin Concerto No. 2
Other ensemble
Year Title
1984 Gestalten for ensemble
1985 Spektra for three cellos
1994–97 Fantaisie mécanique for trumpet, trombone, two percussions and piano
2009–11 Gougalōn. Scenes from a Street Theater for Ensemble[16]
2012 cosmigimmicks. A musical pantomime for seven instrumentalists
2012–13 Graffiti[17]
Piano
Year Title
1995 Piano Etude No.2 (Sequenzen)[18]
1995 Piano Etude No. 3 (Scherzo ad libitum)[19]
1995 Piano Etude No. 4 (Scalen)[20]
1999 Piano Etude No.1 (in C)[21]
2000 Piano Etude No.6 (Grains)[22]
2003 Piano Etude No.5 (Toccata)[23]
Opera
Year Title
2004–07 Alice in Wonderland[24]
Vocal and choral
Year Title
1986–1990 Troerinnen, for 3 sopranos, women's choir und orchestra, after Euripides' The Trojan Women[4]
1991–93 Akrostichon – Wortspiel, for soprano and ensemble[4]
1999–2000 Miroirs des temps, for 4 singers and orchestra[4]
2000–01 Kalá, for soprano, bass, mixed choir and orchestra[4]
2004 snagS&Snarls for soprano and orchestra
2004–2011 Scenes from Alice in Wonderland for soprano, mezzo-soprano and orchestra
2005 Cantatrix Sopranica for two sopranos, countertenor and ensemble[25]
2014 Le silence des Sirènes for soprano and orchestra
2016 Le Chant des Enfants des Étoiles for mixed choir, children's choir, organ and orchestra
Tape/electronics
Year Title
1989–1990 Gradus ad Infinitum for 8 pianos for tape[4]
1992 El aliento de la sombra[4]
1995 ParaMetaString for string quartet and electronics
1998 Xi for ensemble and electronics[26]
1998 Allegro ma non troppo for percussion and electronics[4]
2000 Spectres-spéculaires for violin and electronics
2006–07 Double Bind? for violin and live electronics
2010–11 Fanfare chimérique for two spatially distributed wind ensembles and live electronics

Awards and prizes

Year Award
1984 International Rostrum of Composers for the chamber music work Gestalten
1985 First Prize of Gaudeamus Foundation for Spektra[1]
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 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Violin Concerto[3]
2005 Arnold Schönberg Prize[3]
2007 Heidelberger Künstlerinnenpreis
2010 Music Composition Prize of the Prince Pierre Foundation for Gougalōn[3]
2012 Ho-Am Prize in the Arts
2017 Wihuri Sibelius Prize[27]
2018 Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music[28]
2019 Bach Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg[1][29]
2021 Léonie Sonning Music Prize[30]

Portrait CDs and DVDs

Other selected recordings

  • Spektra für drei Celli. In: Ladder of Escape 6. Taco Kooistra, Viola de Hoog, Eduard van Regteren Altena. CD. ATTACCA, 1992
  • Allegro ma non troppo. In: Fifty Years Studio TU Berlin. EMF Media, DVD 054, 2008
  • Cantatrix Sopranica. In: Sprechgesänge – Speech Songs. musikFabrik, Stefan Asbury. CD. WERGO, 2010.
  • cosmigimmicks. In: "Dokumentation Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik 2013". Celso Antunes, Nieuw Ensemble. CD. WDR, 2013
  • Fantaisie mécanique. In: "Euclidian Abyss". Vimbayi Kaziboni, Internationale Ensemble Modern Akademie. CD. Ensemble Modern Records, 2013
  • Gougalōn. In: "Contact! 2012–13 season". Alan Gilbert, New York Philharmonic. Mp3-CD. New York Philharmonic Records, 2013
  • Six Piano Etudes. Mei Yi Foo. In: Musical Toys. CD. Odradek Records, 2012
  • Six Piano Etudes. Yejin Gil. In: "Fulgurances". CD. Solstice, 2013
  • Advice from a Caterpiller, bass clarinet solo 2007 [8'] (from Alice in Wonderland). Fie Schouten, CD Ladder of Escape 11 ATT2014140[31][32]
  • Six Piano Etudes. Clare Hammond. In: "Etude". CD. BIS, 2014
  • ParaMetaString. Esmé Quartet. In: "To Be Loved". CD. Alpha, 2020

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Unsuk Chin: Biography". Boosey & Hawkes. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
  2. ↑ Clements, Andrew; Maddocks, Fiona; Lewis, John; Molleson, Kate; Service, Tom; Jeal, Erica; Ashley, Tim (September 12, 2019). "The best classical music works of the 21st century". The Guardian. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Seo, Youngsin (December 2016). A Study of Unsuk Chin's Violin Concerto (PDF) (Doctor of Music). Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Whittall, Arnold (2001). "Chin, Unsuk". Grove Music Online (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.53607. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.
  5. ↑ "2004– Unsuk Chin". Archived from the original on February 21, 2014.
  6. ↑ "Unsuk Chin appointed Artistic Director of Tongyeong Festival".
  7. ↑ Unsuk Chin Archived May 20, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  8. ↑ Oper 2007, Opernwelt: Jahrbuch 2007.
  9. ↑ ""Unsuk Chin – cosmigimmicks"". www.boosey.com. ... The second movement, Quad, was inspired by Samuel Beckett’s two homonymous TV plays (which are, in fact, ‘geometrical pantomimes’).
  10. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Rocaná". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  11. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – SPIRA". www.boosey.com. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
  12. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Frontispiece". www.boosey.com. Retrieved September 4, 2018.
  13. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Double Concerto". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  14. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Cello Concerto". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  15. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Šu". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  16. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Gougalon". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  17. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Graffiti". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  18. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Piano Etude No.2 (Sequenzen)". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  19. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Piano Etude No. 3 (Scherzo ad libitum)". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  20. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Piano Etude No.4 (Scalen)". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  21. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Piano Etude No.1 (in C)". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  22. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Piano Etude No.6 (Grains)". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  23. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Piano Etude No.5 (Toccata)". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  24. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Alice in Wonderland". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  25. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Cantatrix Sopranica". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  26. ↑ "Unsuk Chin – Xi". www.boosey.com. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  27. ↑ "Unsuk Chin, Sibelius Prize Winner 2017". Helsinki. Retrieved October 11, 2017.
  28. ↑ "Unsuk Chin Wins $200,000 and New York Philharmonic Commission". New York. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  29. ↑ Isermann, Enno (February 20, 2019). "Komponistin Unsuk Chin wird mit dem Hamburger Bach-Preis 2019 ausgezeichnet" (Press release) (in German). Hamburg – Behörde für Kultur und Medien. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
  30. ↑ Seung-hyun, Song (January 30, 2020). "Chin Un-suk wins Leonie Sonning Music Prize 2021". The Korea Herald. Seoul. Retrieved January 30, 2020.
  31. ↑ "Ladder of Escape 11". Dutch Performers House (in Dutch). April 3, 2021. Retrieved January 29, 2023.
  32. ↑ "Advice from a Caterpillar – Unsuk Chin, by Fie Schouten – bass clarinet". Fie Schouten clarinets. Retrieved August 9, 2022.

Further reading

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