Autumn Sound - "The Tomb of the Naiads" for Solo Piano

A piece for solo piano, "The Tomb of the Naiads(2009)" was successfully performed by pianist Andrew Stewart in the Autumn Sound concert.

The original “The Tomb of the Naiads” (Le Tombeau des Naiades) is a poem by Pierre Louÿs from his collection of 143 prose poems entitled “Songs of Bilitis” (Les Chansons de Bilitis,1894). Using the title of this collection, Claude Debussy set three of the poems to music, including The Tomb of the Naiads (Chansons de Bilitis for voice and piano, 1897–1898).

I wrote a short piano piece to express my impression of both the poem and the song in 2005(Debussy Sketch for Solo Piano). When I started to expand this piano work as The Tomb of Naiads for Solo Piano, I tried to recreate it as a fairly long solo piece interpreting the poem as a new instrumental work.

-Performance

Autumn Sound Concert

October.22.2011 Enoch Pratt Parish Hall, Baltimore, Maryland

Andrew Stewart (Piano)

"The Octopus Lament" was successfully performed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CHAgS5hIBg

Collaborator and composer Jin-Hwa Choi and Lindsey Bailey have written a poem set to music. This piece will be performed as spoken word from inside the mouth of a giant octopus. The octopus will be created out of fabric and draped over the front of the building and stairs of the Troutt Theatre. (http://www.nashvillefringe.org/Festival_Schedule.html)

I'm thinking underwater inspiration ...Weird tremors, awkward and bubbling sounds, classic opera pieces too ... The poem is going to be about love and how each of the tendrils of the Octopus represent a different facet of love ...Think dark. Melancholy. Sad. (- Lindsey Bailey, from one of the brainstorming emails between Jin-Hwa Choi and Ms. Bailey)

This music is composed for the integrative art performance piece, The Octopus Lament by Lindsey Bailey. For illustrating various images related with octopus, water and Ms. Bailey's inspirational ideas, I mixed several sound material such as sea and water sound, recorded sound from real daily life, live performance sound, some electronic sound samples and so on.

In the Music for The Octopus Lament(2011), I tried to express one person's dream-like journey of underwater. In the beginning, sea and the Octopus attract somebody and then he walks into them. He is going to see the fantastic scene of enchanted underwater and the Octopus. However, he realizes that he is captured by them and finally he is not able to escape from their dark and irresistible power of sea and the Octopus.

- Performance

SIDESHOW FRINGE: Nashville's Progressive Performing Arts Event

October.1.2011 Belmont Troutt Theatre, Belmont University, Nashville, Tennessee

Megan Kelley, with music by JinHwa Choi