The Piano Pod, Season 2 Episode 15: Juhi Bansal, composer/conductor, & Nic Gerpe, pianist/educator

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Hello everyone, welcome back to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. I'm Clara Zhang.

I am Yukimi Song.

For anyone listening or watching our show for the first time, welcome! Yukimi and I are both classical pianists and piano teachers from New York City. This podcast is for anyone who plays the piano for fun, loves listening to the piano music, for someone who is currently pursuing a career in piano or works in industry professionally, or anyone who is simply curious about the world of piano. Piano music.

In each episode, we interview a guest speaker who has been breaking exciting new ground in the music industry. Before getting started, we want to thank our listeners for tuning in. Please rate our show and review it on Apple Podcasts because every rating review will help people find our show.

So our guest of today's episode is Juhee and Nick, composers, a teacher-wife and husband duo on a project that they refer to as their labor of love. A set of piano pieces for young pianists, students throughout Theatre Pressure.

Wonderful. Yeah, I mean, I've read their bio and they're very interested. They have such extensive experiences in music, not just limited to one instrument and one genre. So I can't wait to speak to them.

Right. And also very culturally rich, you know, musicians. So yeah, I'm so excited to get this show started. I think they're here.

All right, you are listening to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry about how they are bringing the piano into the 21st century.

We're delighted to introduce our guests of Season 2, Episode 15, Zhu Hui Banzhou and Nick Gurr. Let me start by introducing Zhu Hui, who is a composer, conductor, and educator Radiant and transcendent, the music of Junghee Benson weaves together themes celebrating musical and cultural diversity, nature and the environment, strong female role models. Her music draws upon elements from Hindu dene music, the spectralist's progressive metal, musical theater, and choral traditions to create deeply expressive sound worlds. As an Indian composer brought up in Hong Kong, her work draws upon both those traditions with the gestures of Western classical music. Recent seasons have included commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Beth Marathon Projects, New York Virtuoso Singers, and more. Her music is regularly performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and is available on the Naxos Albany and Rovan Records labels. She recently serves as a musical faculty member at the Pasadena City College.

We are also delighted to introduce contemporary pianist Nick Gerpe, a Los Angeles native who has been hailed as magnetic by Dan Johnson from LA Downtown News. LA Times music critic Mark Swett described his playing as wonderfully illuminating, and his tone is crystalline. His technique is dazzlingly fluid. A dedicated proponent of new music, Nick has worked with composers such as Steve Reich, Gernot Wolfgang, and Anne LeBaron, and has given numerous world premieres in the LA area and abroad. Nick has performed in such venues as Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Wallace Annen Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. As one of 4 young pianists featured on LA-based Pianosphere's new satellite series, he recently performed a critically acclaimed solo recital at the Roy and Edna Disneykal Arts Theatre. Nick is also a dedicated educator and has been a piano faculty member of the Pasadena Conservatory of Music since 2006.

Great, Juhee and Nick, welcome, and we're so happy to have you here.

Welcome. Yay, thank you so much.

Thank you for having us.

That's great. So yeah, it's so great. In the very beginning when you contact us, we were so excited and seeing your work and listen to your music, and especially, you know, knowing that you've been following our podcasting journey, and it's just a You know, it means so much to us.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.

Fantastic project.

Thank you so much. Really, we appreciate it. And that was the whole purpose of our, you know, show in the very beginning when Yukimi, you know, proposed to me all this idea in the beginning of the pandemic. And we felt like, what's a better way of connecting all the musicians in the world, right? And especially for me, you know, we have so many ideas and the questions, but Juhi, I know you grew up in Hong Kong the language and the culture being, you know, I'm Chinese myself originally, so I'm very curious. So how about we get started and you tell us a little bit of your background?

Sure. Um, you know, I have a good friend who calls me culturally conflicted when he's teasing me, and I think that's a really good way to describe my background because I'm Indian. Um, I lived in India while I was a kid. I grew up until I was 7 years old in India. And at the time I wasn't studying music, but my mother worked for a long time in Indian classical radio. So I grew up listening to mostly Hindustani classical music. That's like the traditional classical music of India. And my family moved to Hong Kong when I was 7. And there was a lot of culture shock because we've never been out of the country before that. And as you said, the language is different. The culture is different. The culture is so different and it was challenging in some ways, but also exciting in others. And I think, you know, part of that has led me to just, as an adult now, I get so excited about learning about other cultures and like getting to know anything, food, music, people from other places, because that's just, that feels like it's part of my DNA now. And musically, it was interesting because while I was in Hong Kong, I started doing Western classical music. So piano was my primary instrument. But I did some voice as well, did some piano at school. I was in the Chinese orchestra playing erhu.

Oh my gosh, you played erhu! Oh my gosh, amazing!

It's such a cool instrument. So kind of all of that organically. I came to the States to study composition when I was 17 and kind of feel like I carried all of that with me, you know, all the cultural influences, all the personal influences, and all the musical influences. Kind of been a composer since, so carried all of that into my work is really special and unique, you know. Yeah, yeah.

But I didn't realize you, when you came to, went to Hong Kong, that's when you started learning the Western tradition of classical music. Wow, that is, that is actually really, um, an interesting path to be the composer of, you know, music. But I, I've been listening to your music and really it's so magical because of that, because of this, you know, background. I think it's just a mix of, you know, Hindustani music with this, you know, Western culture, Western classical, and it's just well woven together. It's very organic. And yeah, it's not— you're not trying really hard. It's just, it really comes from your background. That's really amazing. So tell us a little bit more about your compositional style, right? So Hindustani music, maybe some Cantonese tradition, maybe? Sometimes do you get that sort of influence? And then I read your bio and it's spectralist, spectralism, and a progressive metal, whatever. And listen to your music, it's so much variety of things. I know, it's so cool. So the way you're thinking of music is probably it's the sound first, right? Because me, I'm a very stereotypical classical musician where we think of tones, phrase, but that's not the case. So tell us more about your compositional style.

I mean, you know, it's almost hard to describe. That's one of the tricky questions. How do you describe music without the music? But for me, the process, it changes a lot depending on what the exact piece is that I'm writing. So you mentioned this idea of starting with sound. That's absolutely true. So I'll give an example. One of the recent pieces I just had premiered a couple of weeks ago was an orchestra piece for the Oregon Mozart Players. And for me, music usually starts with some kind of inspiration. So for this piece, that piece in particular, it was hearing humpback whale song underwater. That a few years ago I had been diving and it was the most incredible experience hearing them sing. 'Cause you hear it through— what was magical about it is that it's not pure song. It's through the sound of the water, right? It's through moving water. It's through kind of noise from fish eating, which are incredibly noisy. I never realized that until I started diving. Fish eat, they're very noisy.

Amazing.

Wow. But so kind of starting with that and trying to decide how to put it into music. And that led me to a couple of things. One is I wanted it to be kind of an immersive experience for the audience. So that particular piece was for the orchestra, but we decided to pull out a couple of string quartets from the strings to surround the audience. Kind of, that's in some ways a spectralist technique, not exactly, but a little bit. Kind of this idea of creating sound and an immersion around you. And then for that piece in particular, and I'll admit I find excuses to lean a little bit into Hindustani music just because that is so much a part of what I grew up with as well. But in that piece, I wanted to do some things that were kind of evocative of whale sound or whale song. So kind of, you know, I thought normal melody, like Western melodies would feel too normal. You can certainly do that. But the whole point is that they're coming from a different creature. It feels very otherworldly when you feel it. So I tried to lean into some of the ornamentation, particularly in the really long glissandos you get in Hindustani music. And for most of my projects, it's something like that. You know, you kind of, you figure out who you're writing for, what the initial inspiration or prompt is. And one of the things I love about being a composer these days is that there's this freedom that you can pull on anything and everything. So you can think about the melody and the harmony first, and sometimes I do that. But other times you're thinking about, well, what kind of sound effects or what kind of gestures or what kind of immersive things. It's amazing. It's kind of an adventure with each new piece.

It's just such an amazing thing that you are able to draw inspiration from say, you know, the water, right? So that's, you know, and I believe, I remember at our pre-interview, you were saying that you start off with just as a pianist and then later on you start a composition. That is, you know, really, really cool. And now, you know, I'm also curious, Nick, you know, obviously we want to hear a lot from you as well, but both of you working together, do you guys inspire each other or, you know, Nick, what was your background?

Well, I don't have the international cosmopolitan background that he does.

That's all right. Greeny American-ness.

Yeah, pretty much. So I guess in a way I'm a little bit of a stereotype of— one of my friends from New York gives me a hard time. He's like, you know, you LA people, you're born there and you never leave. I'm actually a local boy. I was born and raised in Pasadena, and I went to USC for, you know, all my undergrad, for my master's, and my DMA. Um, when I was a kid, I grew up, um, listening to music, but not so much classical. I mean, my dad has always been, uh, for as long as I can remember, a guitarist. And so I remember, you know, listening to him play, and he would play a variety of stuff from fingerstyle to, you know, rock music and jazz and stuff. And so that's a lot of what I was listening to was stuff that my dad exposed me to, various classic rock things or jazz and jazz fusion things, or else fingerstyle things as well. Both of my parents really loved you know, loved oldies, you know, Smokey Robinson and this kind of thing.

Right. Wow.

It was kind of a thing like Sunday morning pancake breakfast and Smokey Robinson kind of deal. So I, you know, when I was a kid, I thought that, you know, I was going to kind of do what my dad did and pick up the guitar and do that. And then I remember really, really, really clearly sitting in the kitchen at my parents' house one day. I was around 7 or 8 years old, and my mom was on the phone and she randomly leans over to me and kind of puts her hand over the mouthpiece and she says, you know, "Hey, do you want to take piano lessons?" I said, "Sure." Random mom with her questions, right? Well, the random question came about— the person on the other end of the line was this very dear friend of hers who was going through a separation. And she and her husband had this piano at their house that now they were going to have to figure out what to do with. And she offered it to my mom. She said, "You guys can have this piano if you pay the moving costs," basically. And so that's how we ended up with a piano in my house. And that's how I ended up playing the instrument and, you know, really fell in love with it. And, you know, my first piano teacher, He was a jazz pianist who played classical music and taught the standard repertoire. So, you know, then again, it became, you know, I became acquainted with classical music, but I really thought now, okay, well, I'm studying with a jazz guy. I like jazz. I really want to maybe be like the next Chick Corea or Herbie Hancock. And again, my dad kind of, you know, sent me down a slightly different path. You know, one day he gave me these albums of the British progressive rock band Emerson, Lake Palmer, and the center— Keith Emerson was the pianist and keyboardist. And what was amazing to me was not just this trio's incredible original compositions, but also their transcriptions of folks like Bartók, of Žižka Špírá, of Janáček, of Copland. And so the first time I heard any of these things was through this incredible filter of, you know, ELP's electrified rock transcriptions, right? And then, you know, you look at the program notes and you're like, who is this Bartók guy? I'm gonna go look this up. And so, you know, down the rabbit hole we went. And I go and listen to, you know, music of Bartók or music of Ginastera. I mean, I'm sure you two know Ginastera's piano solo music or like his piano concerto. They're amazing. And so I just, I thought I heard this stuff and thought, okay, now I figured it out. This is what I want to do.

This is what I want to do. Yeah, it's always that one thing. And but also one thing led to another, right? And that makes really who you are as a musician too. And that's very interesting, especially you guys both have very different backgrounds but just meet in the middle, like Western, I guess, classical tradition. But you are finding your own way of expressing yourselves through that tradition. So I really want to know more about that. Juhee, I want to know more about this project that you've done maybe a couple years ago, Waves of Change, and I watched the video clip And it's just, it's incredible because I watched it, but the experience that I went through, through that video clip with the music, it was just, I can't quite describe. Emotion just came to it first. And then I watched it again just before this interview, and I didn't realize it was about the surfer facing the wave because surfing is about facing the wave and overcome, right? And I'm not a surfer, so I'm not quite sure, but she tries a few times, and then toward the end— I mean, it's a little spoiler alert— but she's in the middle of the ocean. So it just tells me something. But please tell me about the story, what the background of this video project first.

I mean, it means a lot to me that you enjoyed that, so I'll just say thank you first for that. This was a piece I wrote during the pandemic. I think this would have been early 2020 when everything was getting canceled left and right. And, you know, all the local series had to just— anything you had planned live was suddenly just gone. There's an opera festival called the Prototype Festival in New York. They reached out to me and it was 13 other— 13 composers in total, so 12 other composers, because they had decided to pivot given the limitations of the pandemic to build kind of a digital festival, basically. And they had chosen 3 themes. I think it was identity, fear, and loneliness, kind of topics that were coming up a lot during the first part of the pandemic. And they commissioned each of us to create a small piece, and we had kind of a budget to work with, and then we could do whatever we wanted to. So for me, you know, I remember thinking about this idea of identity. And what came to my mind with that as a prompt was there's this group I had volunteered with a few years ago called the Bangladesh Girls Surf Club. And they've gone through a few name changes since then, but they started as the Bangladesh Girls Surf Club. And I just, I remember this story was so powerful to me. Basically, it is in Cox's Bazar, which is one of the longest stretches of beach in the world and also one of the poorest parts of the world. It's kind of, it's a culture where girls are normally married away between the ages of 11 to 13 because their families can't afford to feed them, can't afford to support them. Girls don't get an education. And there was this group of girls walking on the beach one day selling trinkets as they do, and they saw a lifeguard surfing, so they asked him to teach them. And from that it turned into not just surfing but also a school for the girls. So this was the first time they were getting any kind of an education. It was also food aid for their families so that the families are not feeling pressure to marry them away so early. And kind of, it was interesting because surfing opened the door for these girls into all these other things. I mean, they're thinking about, now some of them are talking about becoming doctors and lawyers and going to college, things that were unthinkable even a few years before. So this was like, I mean, it was incredible. And the girls are so brave and so strong. And there's still a lot of elements of culture clash there. It's like they're really brave for chasing facing this, but they're still in a society where they're not allowed to, you know, they get yelled at every time they go in the water. They've been locked out of— their stuff has been stolen because people think it's so inappropriate that these girls are just choosing anything for themselves. So the inspiration there for the piece was that, and I wanted to do something that as much as possible would make the audience kind of feel something about these girls' story because it is so unique. You know, it's not something I think a lot of people have a lot of entryways into understanding, but maybe we could make music to make them feel something of that. So the main idea of the piece was— and we filmed it here in Los Angeles because that was kind of— that was COVID, nobody could go anywhere. Right, right. And the music features in the foreground, there's a Western soprano and a Hindustani soprano, and they have the same text, but I wanted to kind of embody that sense of culture clash. So it's the same text, but treated in two very different ways in the two voices.

Wow, wow, really? That's— then the video came later, or did you try to match your music to the video? How did it work?

That's a great question. We kind of did them side by side, so it was such a collaborative project. The videographer I was working with, he saw my initial storyboard and he heard the music, so it was interesting in that the music came actually first, if anything. And then we're going on location and filming as best as we can. And one thing I love about that collaborative process is kind of the ideas that come from other people. So Miguel Galindo is the videographer. He had all these cool ideas about like, how do we really convey the struggle through showing this girl kind of get tossed around by the waves and submerged in the waves and kind of that idea of pulling out at the end with a long drone shot. So you kind of feel this sense of lightning.

I mean, I felt it through, especially through music, and it was really beautiful. Now that tells me a lot about, you know, music.

I'm cheating a little. I give you my HMN. I'm just like, you know, I listened to it the other day, but right now as we're, you know, I'm clicking on it again. It just calms me down, you know, especially on like a busy day. You know, this is such beautiful music. I really love it.

Yeah, and then it tells me the power of music, and this is something that I want to teach my students, you know, the music can— you're not just playing the piano and you're doing all these exercises for nothing, but you can change the world, you can bring certain attention, certain things to attention, right? So, well, that's good. And then also I want to know about another project that you've done. It's an opera. I'm very curious to know about Ada Lovelace. And then when I was going through it, the name of the opera is Edge of a Dream.

So it's kind of—

there's actually two different versions of the Ada Lovelace opera. Okay. There's an adult version, which is Enchantress of Numbers, and then LA Opera had commissioned— this was actually also during the pandemic, kind of both around the same time. They have a Youth in Opera program where what they'll do is they'll partner with K-12 schools And they have a number of shows that in normal years, they'll go in and they'll rehearse with the students. And at the end of, you know, the semester, there'll be a show put on of whatever the opera was. And of course, the pandemic hit and kind of the same thing, you're trying to figure out what to do. And I had been talking to them already about wanting to do something about Ada Lovelace, because I and my librettist, Neil Aitken, we were working on the adult opera at that time. You know, they reached back out once the pandemic hit and they're like, this sounds like a perfect project. Can we do it in a version digitally? So if I go back a step, Ada Lovelace, for anybody who doesn't know who she is, is this fascinating character. She was a young woman in 19th century England, like 1830s, 1840s, who was a very gifted mathematician and inventor and— She's sort of credited for writing the first algorithm. And I thought, you know, I started when I was at college first, I was doing a double major with computer science, which I didn't finish because, you know, music is just so all-encompassing. But I remember doing those classes for a couple of years and still never having heard of this woman. And I thought how strange it is that you can be in that field and still not even know her name, you know. So I wanted to use it since we were writing something for children anyway to kind of give girls who might be interested in STEM specifically a role model for that. And then more broadly, Ada's story, I think, is about kind of having the courage to be yourself no matter what the world around you is telling you that you should be.

Hmm.

So it was actually really fun. I'd never done a youth opera before that. And then it was interesting because everything was being rehearsed over Zoom. So all these issues of like delays, they're coaching these students, some of whom have never sung before. Over Zoom and teaching them how to record. And I think finally they made a graphic novel version. The students took photos and they had an artist kind of turn these, stylize them and turn them into black and white. But, uh, I thought it was the kind of thing Ada herself would have appreciated because she was like so far ahead of her contemporaries and seeing what you might do with computers.

So yeah, exactly. Yeah, she's the one who basically thought of computer as not just a computing machine but like being able to use it on a daily basis, right? Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah. I'm studying a little bit about, you know, blockchain and crypto and things. And then one of the platforms, it's called Cardano. They named their big, you know, crypto coin as ADA, ADA, because to, you know, named after Ada Lovelace. And I was just so curious about How come did you make the opera out of her name? So—

Now, Nick, I would like to know. I mean, first of all, as a, you know, husband and wife, I guess you guys are not duos. I mean, do you play together, or do you ever do any collaboration together? Or I know you guys wrote a series of children's book or music for younger students. Is that right? Could you guys talk about a little bit more?

Yes. So as far as playing together, I think we've only ever actually played a Piano Four Hands piece a total of one time. But as far as collaborative stuff, yeah, absolutely. I mean, she's written for me both solo piano works and also I'm also in a duo with a violinist. She's written a couple of pieces for us. As well, when she's written stuff that requires a pianist, I often will get the first call for it. Right, that's great. And I commissioned her recently to write a piece as part of a project I'm working on revolving around the Macrocosmos of George Krauss.

That's right.

But as far as the— the pedagogical pieces, you know, I, of course, in my teaching, teach standard repertoire. So we do a lot of stuff with different composers from different eras. And often— well, I should say the kind of impetus for this in a way is that the conservatory where I teach, we do— the piano department every year has a Composer of the Year. And we sort of rotate through. We do essentially one composer from one era every year, right? So usually our Baroque composer is Bach, most often. Classical composer, we've done Haydn, we've done Beethoven. Romantic, we've had, you know, Schumann, Görlitz, Bergmüller. And, you know, in the 20th century, we've done Bach, Bartók and Kabelewski and Shostakovich and Prokofiev, they all have really incredible teaching pieces in addition to their concert works. But finding stuff written by living composers for a younger audience is often kind of difficult. And it's sort of a strange thing because I find often that kids are the most receptive people to contemporary music. You know, they have— form these biases that adults often have, you know, it's like, oh, new music is going to be harsh and dissonant and hard to listen to.

Exactly.

So I— we were just having a conversation one day and she had this idea of, why don't I write some pieces for your studio and your kids can premiere them? And it's like, well, that sounds really great. I mean, my kids are going to love this. And I had 8 or 9 of them who were really— it was really kind of an interesting thing because they were all at slightly different levels. And so we thought, well, this would be perfect to kind of model it as a progressive sort of volume with each piece increasing in difficulty. And each one focuses on slightly different challenges. So there's certain ones that have really interesting harmonic things that might have, you know, something that's very modal or some kind of little chord cluster thing or something with changing time signatures or mixed meter to really introduce many of these 20th and 21st century challenges in a way that's also very accessible. So the pieces are, you know, the entire volume is called Travels, and both of us are very much into hiking and backpacking and whatnot. So every piece is kind of a— almost like a little—

True Californians, right?

Something like that, yeah. But every piece is a sort of musical postcard from this different outdoor place that we've been to.

Oh, wow.

So, you know, as far as the actual collaborative process, it was, you know, she did truthfully most of the heavy lifting as far as the writing the pieces and whatnot. And then it was, you know, I would take them and play them and add fingerings and, you know, figure out would this work for a student's hand, for example, you know, as opposed to my hand, you know, things, you know, issues like that, like just playability for a younger person.

That's great. You know, the other day we, um, locally we had this teachers meeting, and then I attended— there was this workshop about contemporary and also diverse pieces by diverse composers. And then she was giving us the presentation, and then she assigned us, like, audience, like, to create an hour program where you're encouraged to insert a lot of compositions by contemporary composers or composers of color and whatnot. Women composers. Right, female composers, basically diversity, right? And then, but I want you to create, we want you to create the, um, the program for intermediate students. And they immediately, I raised my hand, I know this composer, Shuhi Bonsang.

That's right.

And she has this series of, you know, Yeah, we were so proud. So what do you think this— I want to be more knowledgeable of contemporary music too, but I tend to go to, you know, usual suspects, you know what I mean? Like when I teach music, even when I play the piano, like I tend to go, you know, Chopin, Schubert. I mean, they are incredible artists, they were, but basically they've been dead for how many hundreds of years. So we're really, you know, playing something old and then that music is not really representing our lives, right? So what do you think of that? How can we really bring this contemporary music to be part of our lives? What do you think? What do you think we should do? Both of you, I'm asking both of you.

Nick, why don't you go first and I'll jump in after?

Okay.

Okay.

Well, I would say that, you know, just speaking from a standpoint of, you know, where we're at in LA, we have so much support in town for contemporary music. I mean, there are so many different series in town and so many different groups that do contemporary stuff. I mean, from the LA Phil, particularly like their Green Umbrella series, to all kinds of different festivals in town. You know, Hear Now Festival is a big one. Ojai Music Festival, for example, while not LA exactly, it's not particularly far, and they have a big tradition of new music. And there are so many different ensembles and whatnot that focus on contemporary music here. So it's very easy and accessible here to find really what's current, you know. And so I would say that, you know, as teachers especially, like, it's really important for us just to educate ourselves as far as, you know, who's writing music right now, who are the composers who are being featured on various orchestra concerts or all of these various series, and go check out their music and, you know, really to become knowledgeable. And then you can— then you can pass that on to your students and find music that you can give them to listen to and to play. You know, a lot of what I think about a lot, both in my playing and programming of concerts and what I try to give to my students, is that at one point, Schumann and Chopin were contemporary music. They were— Absolutely. Modern artists and, you know, Beethoven, not always, not always particularly understood by audiences and critics, right?

They were once alive and new.

Yeah, exactly. And so the idea being that, you know, what we're doing is, you know, it's a living art. We are connected to this history and continuing with a tradition. I don't think that it's standard repertoire or contemporary music. Like, for me, it's really— it's a continuum, right? It's a continuing history. It's still evolving. It's a living and developing art form. And for me, both as a player and a teacher, you know, I really— I feel like in working with living composers and with really trying to understand history. It connects me better to the composers of the past than if I didn't do contemporary stuff at all. You know, it kind of puts the context of, you know, all these folks were living in breathing people at one point.

One other, maybe two things I would say to add to that. One is that I remember having this conversation with somebody recently about kind of people's reactions to contemporary music, and kind of, I think TV is a pretty good analogy to that. It's like, you think about if you watch a TV show, a current TV show that you don't like, we never decide that, well, I just hate normal current TV. Nobody says, I hate contemporary TV. You say, "I didn't like that show." And I think music should be kind of the same way. I mean, as you're exploring, you know, what you're talking about, trying to hunt down different types of contemporary music, you're going to find stuff that doesn't work for you and stuff that doesn't work for your students and that just subjectively you don't like. And that needs to be totally okay, but that shouldn't shut you off from all the rest of contemporary music because the cool thing about music right now is that it's all these different things depending on who's writing it. There's no really— we say contemporary music as if it's one thing, but that's a meaningless description. It just means it's being written now in time and doesn't mean anything about how it sounds. As far as sort of specific places to look for music, Nick, chime in if you know any others. YouTube seems silly, but it's one of the most obvious ones.

Oh, YouTube's great for that.

I'm shocked. You know, it's so easy these days to put everything up online. If you just look for playlists, and I have a series of playlists on music by women composers kind of separated out by instrumentation. I know there's other organizations that do the same. There are a couple of big channels. George Giannopoulos is one. I can—

Yeah, that one's great.

—follow. That also feature contemporary music. YouTube is actually probably one of the easiest places if you just kind of type in what you're looking for, like an instrumentation, some basic description. Maybe.

Now, also, how— what do you think about, like, any— is there any Facebook group of contemporary music?

Sure. I mean, I'm a member of a bunch of them. One of them that comes immediately to mind is Los Angeles Contemporary Music Enthusiasts. Wow. But there, I mean, there's a plethora of these, you know, you just punch it into the search bar of Facebook. And you should be able to find something.

You know, as a podcaster, you know, one of the reasons I started this, to have this conversation and stimulate and bring this, you know, different things about music into one place and, you know, tell people about it, right? So, yeah, so what should we do? What— is there any like a website, or how can we always be in touch with that world of contemporary music? Sometimes, you know, like, because classical, especially being a pianist, and I tend to be on this traditional side, it's very easy because that's very familiar to me, you know what I mean? Like, all the training and even the books I have here is so traditional, and they're wonderful, but it's a very easy way to get to for me. So it takes a little bit more, um, to be in the contemporary music world. To be honest, I should be really more open. I am open-minded, but so what do you think the best way? Is there any group I should be part of it, like as a teacher, or do you know anything?

I would say, you know, look at resources like New Music USA, American Composers Forum, New Music Box, all of these are good places to kind of get a, like, general sense of what's going on. For me personally, a lot of the knowledge is in just being inquisitive and, you know, if I, let's say I play a piece by a certain composer that I really like and I might, then just go to their website and see, hey, what else has this person written for solo piano? Or what else has this person written? You know, I've had to do a lot of searching for programming for me and my violin duo partner, for example. And so you just kind of go hunting for stuff. And I would look, I would look also at, you know, pianists who do a lot of contemporary music, look at what they're programming on their concerts. And make lists of these composers for yourself. And, you know, the nice thing is nowadays basically everybody has a website and a YouTube channel and maybe a Vimeo, you know, all these things. Also just social media.

Yeah, social media in general.

So it's really easy. You know, I just, you know, on my computer, for example, I have a couple of files. It's like piano solo repertoire wishlists. You know, it's like, you know, this I, you know, I might go to a concert and hear this composer's music and go check it out and find that, oh wow, they have XYZ ABC things for my instruments or a group I might be playing with. And then, you know, invariably that leads you to, well, this person studied with such and such, I'm going to go check and check out so-and-so's music also. And so you just kind of keep expanding your your, your web of knowledge. And, um, you know, yeah, for me, a lot of it really has, you know, there are absolutely these resources, but a lot of it's just going and, uh, hunting these things down. But I mean, it's with as many resources as we have with social media and just search engines and stuff, it's, it's really, really quite easy to find, right?

You know, it does sort of bring up an interesting point though, Yukimi. You're right, it takes extra work often to find the contemporary things. I know— I can't remember the names off the top of my head, but I'm happy to send them to you after this conversation. I know there are a couple of publishers that have these like collections basically of contemporary pieces graded by level, which are a pretty good place to start. They're certainly not the end of the conversation. I would say what Nick described, like play through them, take a look. If you like the pieces, look up the composer, see who else is kind of connected to that. But I think those are actually— they're a pretty good place to start. I'm blanking on the names right now, but I know there's at least one that is graded piano music by women composers and a couple of others that are just contemporary.

Yeah, I was just mentioning that, like, for example, Francis Clark Music Library. If you're looking specifically for teaching pieces, they have, for example, here's our, you know, 20th century series, you know. Another one, the Royal Conservatory, the Celebration Series, for instance, again, if you're thinking specifically for pedagogical works. And again, it's nice because then you look at some of the composers and you just go find their other music and, you know, it's one of the ways I discovered this really Well, there's a very fantastic Canadian composer named Alexeina Louis, who she has one or two pieces— I mean, she writes incredible concert music. I've played a couple of her solo piano pieces in concert, but, you know, I noticed I was teaching one of my students out of— I can't even remember which level of the Celebration Series, but one of Alexeina's pieces showed up and I was like, I didn't realize she wrote teaching pieces. And sure enough, she's got this incredible set of, um, what is it called, Starlight Starbright. It's this, you know, again, this collection of progressive, uh, possibly more difficult pieces. And there's— they're super appealing, um, you know, very evocative, um, works.

Sometimes surprises just come come, you know, during exploration. When we're curious, there are always things that comes up. Speaking of, you know, Nick, I listened to this— I think it was called Talk It Out. It's a trio of yours and by Timothy Peterson. Timothy Peterson, that's right. Yeah, I mean, I played it with a percussion band when I was in Kansas when I first came to this country, so I was like really intrigued by this ensemble.

So, so Timothy Peterson, he's an LA-based composer, and I mentioned earlier the Hear Now Music Festival, and Hear Now is an annual festival of LA composers. And so what they do is they solicit composers to submit works, and then their panel listens and they'll select a certain number. Here Now usually does— actually, they're going to start their festival tomorrow. They'll have 3 concerts. It's like a Friday, Saturday, Sunday kind of thing. And so, you know, every concert has a completely different program of local composers and it's music that was— it's all kinds of different orchestrations and ensembles. And so this piece, they, I'm on their list for performers. I've played for this festival for several years. And so they sent me this piece, it was asking, hey, do you want to play this, premiere this for the festival? And this was back in 2019.

And so— Okay. Pre-pandemic world. Pre-pandemic, exactly.

It's like last century. Sure feels like it. So anyway, they sent me the piece and it had been premiered, but— so this was going to be a West Coast premiere. It was premiered back East somewhere. I can't remember where off the top of my head, but the composer sent the score and he sent a MIDI realization. And I listened to the realization and read through the score and I was thinking, oh my gosh, this is such a cool piece. Yeah, I really want to play this. So I told him, yeah, I'll do it. This is great. And so I learned the piece and had it under my fingers and ready to go. And then, of course, COVID happened and everything got shut down. And so they were trying to kind of, like everybody else, trying to sort of find their way with, okay, how do we proceed now? And so they found a venue to do these recordings of the pieces rather than doing them live. And so the recordings got— it's kind of funny because we would have the piece ready to go and then the recording would get postponed. It's like, well, all right, I'll see you in 6 months, I guess. And so it'd get, you know, postponed again. And finally, finally, finally, we were able to do them last summer. There were 2 trios. One was Timmy Peterson's and one was by Gernot Wolfgang that I did. And so they did this virtual festival thing where we recorded all of the pieces at this really beautiful studio out in Woodland Hills, and then they would release them over the course of a week as a virtual festival. But, uh, as far as the, the, the piece, um, Timmy Peterson talks about how this piece was really inspired by, um, the conversational qualities of jazz performance, particularly improvisation. And what's kind of interesting is there's no improvisation at all in the piece. It's like fully, fully, fully, fully notated. Wow. And it's definitely got some, you know, because trying to notate what a jazz player does in an improvisation as far as rhythm and inflections and whatnot, it's actually— That's hard. It's really rather difficult. And so, you know, it was really interesting having this score presented where, you know, you see all of it fully written out. And, you know, I, I, I love jazz music, but I don't, don't play it.

And you guys are both classical musicians starting out, right? Exactly. That's amazing that you tap into all these different worlds.

I know.

And, you know, so, and Timmy really I think successfully pulls this off with this piece. It's, you know, it's really high energy. It's definitely recognizable as jazz-inspired, but there's also within it a lot of very kind of modernist-sounding stuff. There's this particular section where every time I play it, I think, well, this is kind of reminiscent of Messiaen without being Messiaen, you know? Wow. Just for example. And there's a certain lyricism in the piece and everything. What's interesting too about him is, you know, kind of like what Juhi was talking about earlier with composition is, you know, he comes to this piece with this idea of inspired by these elements of jazz music, but kind of anything goes. And so I'd listened to some of his other pieces for voice and piano, for example, example. Or I commissioned him to write a solo piano piece for me for this other project, like a 3-minute solo piano piece, and they are completely different. Like, you would almost not guess that they were written by the same guy, other than that they're just fantastic music. Right. You know, there are a couple of little harmonic things that you detect, okay, here's— yeah, okay, that is him, but They're equally well-crafted and equally successful compositions, but stylistically night and day different.

You have such an extensive background, you know, like, but when I watched that video, I thought you can actually play the jazz music. I thought you were improvising. I thought you were a jazz musician.

Yeah, until you told me. That's very high praise because I'm not a jazz player and I, you know, I don't even play.

But you really capture that, I think, because you were listening to different kind of music growing up, and so it shows. But I also— yeah, yeah, exactly. So I also want to find out about your influence by George Crumb, right? So you have this project of Macrocosmos 50 to celebrate the 50th ear of that, Volume 1, right? And I was listening today on YouTube, Makrokosmos number 10 and 11 on YouTube, performed by you. So tell me, just tell us briefly about the project.

Sure, well, George Crumb has been one of my favorite composers for a long, long time. When I was an undergrad, I got turned on to his music and particularly there's a trio for piano, cello, and flute called Vox Balinae, The Voice of the Whale, as well as a solo piano suite. It's a 7-movement piece called A Little Suite for Christmas. And I listened to these pieces and played them, and the sound world that he creates is just so unique and individualistic, and it's incredible. I mean, he was really a pioneer as far as utilizing the full color palette available to the piano, particularly as regards extended piano techniques, right? So playing inside of the piano and doing all these different effects, you know, plucking the strings, strumming the strings, harmonics, muting, all that good stuff. In addition to all these theatrical things that he asked for you to do, like whistling or chanting or shouting or moaning like a ghost.

Yes, yes.

So I've, you know, ever since I heard it, I just fell in love with this sound world and this piece in particular, Macrocosmos Volume 1. So when I was a doctoral student at USC, one of, well, I should say one of the faculty at USC and one of my inspirations, there was Dr. Stuart Gordon, and— Oh yes, yes. He was not my primary teacher, although I, you know, I took several classes from him. You know, he taught the piano literature classes. Right, I used to have his book, textbook. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, I don't know if people quite realize this about Dr. Gordon. I mean, because, you know, his knowledge of the repertoire is just encyclopedic. I mean, right, he's forgotten more about music than I'll ever know. So, you know, he edited and put out his edition of like the Beethoven sonatas, for example, but he's also a complete master of this piece, Makrokosmos 1, and he studied it with David Burge, who is the pianist it was written for. Yes. And So I'd heard him play it at USC, and I was just like, oh my God, I gotta— I have to play that. It's amazing. And so for my doctorate, you know, we had to— at USC we do DMA, so we have to do a lecture recital. And so I was— I decided I wanted to do this piece, and my teacher said, well, go study it. Go take a semester and study it with Dr. Gordon. You'll never get a better source for how to do this. 'Please.' And so I did. And it was amazing, like, kind of, you know, being able to not only study with him, as he's an incredible teacher, but to kind of have this progression of, you know, Dr. Gordon to David Burge to Crumb, you know, this kind of lineage of the piece. And so it's a piece that there's a lot of Krumm deals with a lot of big extra-musical associations in the piece. There's incredible lines of poetry by Pascal and Rilke and just these big metaphysical and cosmic ideas. And also, you know, the piece is, you know, he talks about it reflecting his admiration for two great 20th century composers, Bartók, and of course the title is a play on the Mikrokosmos. Exactly, yes. And then he also talks about writing these 12 fantasy pieces being, you know, the structure and format being linked to Debussy's Preludes. Oh, Preludes, yes, yes. And in fact, Crumb wrote the second volume of Macrocosmos, which came the year later, 1973, is another 12-volume set. So now he has these two sets of 12, like the two—

Just like Debussy, yeah.

Wow. But the pieces are also— so there's always like layers to this piece, you know. And every piece, he calls it 12 fantasy pieces on the signs of the zodiac. And so every movement is supposed to in some way reference a different zodiac sign. And in addition, at the end of every movement, Crumb puts a set of initials, and the initials are a friend or a family member or a colleague or a teacher or some musical influence. Who falls under that sign, you know.

And so there's like— So he's like astrologist.

Yeah, basically. Yeah. And so there are just all of these layers upon layers upon layers in this piece. And it's so special to me, just artistically that, you know, and I've played it many times in concert.

And so then right now, so currently what's this project? Like, so—

So the project is basically that the piece was written in 1972, and so to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the composition of the piece, what I decided to do was to commission 11 composers plus me to each write a one-movement musical response to a movement of the original. So basically what I did is to ask these composers and basically give them free rein, say, you pick a movement. And as soon as one person claimed a movement, then that was it. Then this person is doing this movement. And so by this process, then I had, you know, 12 composers each writing one piece responding to a different movement. And now—

Zhu He, were you part of it?

Part of the project? Yeah, so I was. I think Nick mentioned, because they're short pieces, 3 minutes, I think, is the rough timeline for each one.

Yeah, so she was number 11. Okay.

Oh, I thought she would be number 1, you know.

I did pick my movement first, so I was number 1 in that sense.

All right.

So yeah, so now there's, you know, so we have this now complete new cycle of 12 pieces that complement the original. And so the program that I've been touring with and that I'll record next month is, uh, the first half is the original Volume 1 of The Macrocosmos, and the second half is these 12 new pieces.

Incredible.

And Jackie was your number 11 Sagittarius then?

I don't remember which zodiac sign it was. That's awful. Gemini.

Thank you.

Okay, got it.

All right. Wow, that's so—

look out for that.

Yeah, but that's an incredible project. Thank you, Trucy. So one of the articles I read about you, uh, says that you recently became a U.S. citizen, correct? Yeah. Congratulations. And guess what? So are Clara and I. It happened during pandemic.

Oh my gosh, congratulations! Yeah, so we both—

three of us became— yeah, right? —so as easy, you know, I don't know about you, but the green card process was extremely difficult for me. And, you know, and just, it was a nightmare. But U.S. citizen was just, came just like that. It was the application was not as complicated as green card. And, you know, so when the citizenship thing came and I was in shock. In shock. It's like, oh my gosh, this is it, really? Right? So actually, because of the pandemic, because then during that time getting U.S. citizen, all these happen in one, one, once, and then now I'm just coming out of— we are coming out of the COVID and everything, and I have this U.S. citizenship. I mean, I'm in the still process of— do you understand? Yeah. And especially— yeah, right. And I, as much as you have sort of complicated, you know, racial or national background. I do too. You know, I'm Korean but born and raised in Japan. But, you know, in terms of identity, it's a very complicated thing. And then all of a sudden— and also, as in, you had the Indian passport before, right? Yes.

Did you have to give up your— Yes. Basically, the short answer is yes, because India doesn't allow dual citizenship. There's kind of a— it's a different name. It's not quite a passport, but sort of like it. Hmm. Right. Well, for me, Korean—

I was born and raised in Japan, but I have a Korean passport. So I had to give it up. So I know it's a very, very strange thing. And then it became a US citizen. And then it's just a very simple thing. I just became this one thing. I'm still kind of adjusting to it. Now, point I'm making is, so what do you think of this identity, right? So how are you— is it affecting you as a person with such creativity? And how is it going to— I don't know. And the one wonderful thing about being America is the freedom of expression, and it's limitless., right? So what do you think of that? What do you think? Are you— how are you processing it as a person and as an artist?

I think that's a good question. It's a complicated question. I mean, so much of it— and I don't know, Yukimi, this was the same for you— so much of it is kind of pragmatic things. You know, I used to worry all the time about, well, how far ahead can you plan anything? Can you plan projects? Can you plan life when you don't know if in 1 year or 2 years or less you might just have to leave? So for that to suddenly, with the citizenship, that's all of a sudden that's off the table. I just like, this is a place that I can just stay and be. And, you know, I suppose India was that before because I had a passport, but I haven't lived in India since I was 7. Like, it doesn't— right, it's a place I have connections to, but it's not— it doesn't feel like home exactly when I visit either. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you come here on the student visa as well?

Yes, I did. Okay. Yeah. You know, so, you know, the whole process of like TSA with a student visa and walking in with your international papers and like, yeah, you know, I've had students worry about suddenly when money becomes a thing, it's not just worrying about money, but you're worrying about having to go home. And like if your grades start to slip suddenly, you're again, like everything is so tied in tightly together. One huge thing for me personally with the citizenship now as an American citizen, I don't have to keep worrying about that.

Yes, I totally relate to that. Yeah.

So you can even just this idea of, okay, I can plan. You never know what will actually happen in 3, 4, 5, 10 years, but you can make some choices that maybe try to work towards things. It's just one less huge unknown. And, you know, just personally also, Nick mentioned earlier this idea of traveling and how much we'd like to learn from other cultures. On an Indian passport when we used to travel together. So we would try to enter places together, and I'm on an Indian passport and he's on the American passport. And I just— holy shit, yeah. Oh, and I remember just— you have a difference in treatment when you try to enter places, or like I could stay for maybe a week total on an Indian passport and Nick gets 6 months access or something. All these things. Um, as far as identity, I mean It's complicated. I don't feel like— I mean, I think it's similar to what you described. It feels strange to me. You have this piece of paper, this passport now, and it just says, "Now I'm American." I'm still Indian. I know I had to give up the passport, but I'm still Indian. I don't stop being Indian. Um, yeah, it's good. It's very complicated. But I think one of the things that is cool and fantastic about globalization in a sense, maybe our modern world in the larger sense, is that so many people have these experiences, right? It's not just you, and it's not just Clara, and it's not just me. This is in a sense starting to become the norm. I hope things will be easier for people going forwards, but this kind of—

especially the artistic, you know, world. I feel like a lot of artists here in New York, you know, it's like maybe less than 10% of people are actually from here. I'm sure California too, but you know, maybe there are a bit more locals. Yeah, yeah, they're changing.

But how, how, how does that affecting you as an artist? What do you think?

Um, in a pragmatic sense, a lot of it is opportunities. You know, I remember when I was here on a student visa, so for composers specifically, there's all these opportunities for composers, but at the time so many of them were restricted to green cards and citizenship, or only citizenship. So like, that was something very practical and pragmatic. I noticed as a student, I want to apply for all these things my colleagues could apply for, and I just wasn't eligible to do it. Now there's this like huge amount of freedom. Even a couple of grants that I applied for and got in the last year, they only happen— I couldn't have done it if I didn't have citizenship. I just wouldn't be eligible. Right. So pragmatically, that kind of thing helps, and then it enables us to do projects. So like Yukimi, you were asking earlier about that Waves of Change project. One of the grants that we got is to take that as kind of a starting point and build an album around it. And it's like, so highlighting women's stories, like remarkable women's stories, and building music around that. And it's kind of, you know, it's weird how things are tied so closely together, but without the citizenship, I couldn't have applied for the grant, I couldn't have gotten the grant. So kind of, and now that enables being able to continue with this project.

Well, thank you for sharing all that personal thing. I just thought I wanted to ask, and it's, um, yeah, um, we are all processing, but also this complicatedness, being so complicated, is part of it, right? So we— but I think in America, this country allows me to be that. So it wasn't that— wasn't so easy in Japan while I was living as a foreigner. So yeah, yeah, so I'm very excited about this news. Chapter of my life. And anyway, so I wish we had more time to keep going and going, but we always have to, you know, get to the next place. So I just have a very last question for both of you.

If you could briefly tell us advice for young musicians, rising musicians, upcoming musicians, maybe just to stay open-minded, to listen to everything you can get your hands on, and to not let people box you into this style or that style or the other style. Yes, you have to focus on technique, but let yourself be adventurous enough to explore whatever is catching your interest musically.

Nick, how about you? I would definitely say exactly what Juhee said. She kind of stole my thunder on that one a little bit. Yeah, I would say just keep open mind and open ears, you know, be willing to be adventurous and, you know, listen to and take inspiration from a variety of sources. And of course, you know, just as in anything else, just work really hard, you know, and, you know, always always do your best and put the, you know, your absolute best effort into everything that you do, because that will pay off.

That's beautiful. Well, thank you so much, both of you. Wow, what a beautiful conversation we had. And, you know, learn both of, you know, about both of you and your style as composers and musicians and, you know, our nationalities and all of that. It's just thank you again. So now we go to the fun part of our show. Are you guys ready to fight? We are going to the rapid fire question. Okay, and so me and Yukimi each will ask a question and then we would ask you to answer it as quickly as possible. So just shout out your answers, whoever think of first. So are you ready? I'm going to go first. All right, what is your comfort food? Ramen.

Nick? Cheeseburger.

All right, very American. Right, cats, cats or dogs?

Dogs.

Oh, I used to love cats, but I'm allergic, so I kind of have to say dogs by default.

Okay, beautiful.

What is your word or words to live by?

Be brave, fearless.

Coffee. Very important.

Great. Um, what is the most important quality you look for in other people?

Honesty. Sincerity.

What is the worst quality in people you want to stay away from?

Dishonesty, lack of integrity.

It's okay, I'll, I'll, I'll, I will, uh, I'll take that one. Yeah, lack of integrity. That's right.

Okay, well, you guys are good combination. Go ahead.

So, oh, it's me. Name 3 people who inspire you, living or dead.

My teacher at USC, Bernadine Blaha. George Crumb. All right. And I would say George Washington.

Great. All right. Gosh, only 3, Yukimi? Okay, off the top of my head, Malala, Jane Goodall, and maybe the Bangladesh Girl Surf Club. I'll put them in as a collective.

You're the Wonderful. Love that. Name one piece in your current playlist.

John Harbison's Mirabai Songs.

All right. Another John composer. I was just listening to Road Movies by John Adams. All right, John Adams.

Yeah, very beautiful.

Name one book title in your library. Listening to whales.

1984. You get only one piece or song to listen to for the rest of your life, what is it?

I'll do John Adams, uh, excuse me, John Luther Adams, "Become Ocean," just because it's so long. Okay.

Who?

Man, this is a tough one. I know. My goodness.

Everybody hates it.

You could do the Ring Cycle. You can borrow my, like, lengthy—

There you go. I'm tempted to say John Cage, 4:33. Yeah, that's right.

That's not the first time someone printed it out, but very good one.

Good, good, good answer. All right, the last question. Music is blank. Fill in the blank. Amazing. Great. Amazing.

Nick. Life. Life.

All right, ding, ding, ding. That's it. Wow, you won. Great, great job.

Now Nick and I can fight over who actually won.

Well, you can fight tonight. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. The episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Juhee and Nick. Thank you for joining us today and sharing your stories, your insights, your expertise. We want to encourage our audience to check out Juhee's website for her latest projects at juheebunso.com, and Nick's Microcosmos 50 project at his website at the nic50project.com. Nick Gerb— I still cannot say your last name. Why don't you say it for me? Gerby.com. The links are listed in the description below.

Thank you to our wonderful audience and fans for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review on whatever podcasting platform you use. If you're watching us on YouTube, remember to hit the thumbs up button and be sure to subscribe to our channel. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The links are in the description below.

If you're interested in being the guest or recommending someone to be on our show as a guest, or if you'd like to sponsor, collaborate with us, shoot us an email at thepianopodmic@gmail.com or send us a DM via social media.

We will see you for the next episode of The Piano Pod. Bye, everyone, and thank you, Nick and Juhi. Thank you, thank you so much for joining us.

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