Works for a player alone

Score video 

dedicated to Ilgyeong Shin & Elly K

As a life-long viola fan (and a viola player myself too), this is intended as a study on virtuosic aspects of viola, to overcome its inherent timbral/structural “imperfections”, which makes the instrument as a kind of laughing stock, for example; being a victim of so called “Viola jokes”. Also the pieces are a kind of hommage or rather a violation to repertoires by the composers of 20th century which helped expanding the instrumental possibility of viola, which being:

1st Mov.: Paul Hindemith – Der Schwanendreher (1935)

2nd Mov.: Luciano Berio – Sequenza VI (1967)

3rd Mov.: Gérard Grisey – Prologue (1976)

 All three given pieces were manipulated, distorted, and VIOLATED in many different ways. Like the first chord of Berio’s Sequenza VI getting softened by changing the playing technique, and Grisey’s Spectral passage of Prologue got mutilated to be played like a groovy music played by a street performer. All those treatment of pre-existing materials can be seen as “violations” towards them, but the result was quite expansive and was quite entertaining to the player.

Date of composition: (2021)

Score video 

Written as a part of Score Video Community Collab 3 : BASED variations (2021)

Date of composition: (2021)

dedicated to Agnès Hyun-jeong Lee

Premiered in Nov.7.2024. in Seoripul Unaccompanied Solo Series, Bach-Rediscovery of Forgotten Sounds

Date of composition: (2024)

 Kilroy, known lexically as "the name of a mythical male figure." We have no way of knowing who he is.

 The same goes for this piece. We have no way of knowing what this piece is trying to convey. And like the contradiction of this cheerful, French-style tonal music telling the story of a person I don't even know, the music is wrapped in multiple layers of contradiction, presenting the listener with a puzzling enigma that is clear and easy to understand, yet leaves us questioning whether it even intends to tell a story.

 If anyone here knows Mr. Kilroy, please send him regards, whether he is in heaven or hell!

Date of composition: (2023)

Nomenclature

• Violin
  
  

commissioned by and written for Orest Smovzh

  The piece was written from suggestion of Orest Smovzh under the condition of writing a piece that spans under 20 seconds.

 The title comes from a line from the following lyrics of a song by Japanese band Shinsei Kamattechan (神聖かまってちゃん), “Ruru's Suicide Show on a Livestream”.

I can't make friends on my way home At dusk,
sometimes, in the midst of the gentle fluttering of data, 

Bluetooth of the streets ruined me.
She was always there when she jumped into Chuō line
and was told she was a nuisance. 

The girl moved on quickly.
Even if you ask the FBI, they don't know.
She was always screaming in her strange messages.

 The line naturally has a very loose connection with the tone material of the song stated above, but doesn’t have any deeper one than that. The music explores itself in the midst of alterations and stark contrast between pressurised bowstrokes and shimmering harmonics. It is the player’s task to navigate flurently between two sonic realms, remaining perfectly in poise.

 After some rough planning, the piece was written in 58 minutes, in April 5th, 2026.

Date of composition : (2026)

Nomenclature

• Pianoforte
  
  

commissioned by KAJIMOTO, for Kaoruko Igarashi

Date of composition : (2026)