Collaboration with New York Classical Symphony Ensemble

The collaboration project I was working on with young musicians from New York Classical Symphony Ensemble went great. The show was on last Thursday, October 6th, at the 1 & 9 Gallery in Ridgefield, NJ. 5 musicians played 15 minute long piece, titled Love..., composed by Byungjin Kim, who also played piano. It consisted of 8 movements and there was a vocalist for one of them. I had heard the piece with a music file before, which Byungjin made roughly for me by piano. I loved it, it was a beautiful piece, but I had never heard it played as an ensemble.

Since I was still working on making a video file (my friend Judy was making it, I was basically just sitting next to her. She stayed up all night for me working from 3pm to 9am to make a beautiful video file then went home in a state of being groggy..!!) on the night before the performance, I couldn't go to the musicians' rehearsal, which I was supposed to go to match up my video file with the music.

So it was basically the first time for me that I listened to the music played by the ensemble, at the very performance, while I was sitting right next to them controlling the computer to project my images on the wall of the gallery. I was truly amazed by their beautiful performance and couldn't believe I had a chance to create images to go with the music.

Despite some behind the scene obstacles, the performance went great, and now I have to work on the project more to make it better. Basically I finished five 30 x 22 pastel drawings in a month so far, and I'm planning to add some etching pieces to the project. Next performance has been scheduled on November 4th, Friday night, in Columbia University as a part of other events. We're hoping to have our own performance in which we would be the center of everything! Yay! :) I'm also hoping to have a chance to show my original pieces along with the video. Detailed information will be posted, and next time I will make sure to have some photos as well. ;) I didn't invite anyone this time (for some reasons,) and I was at the performance so I couldn't take any pictures. (Though they played two more pieces after the Love..., and I went into the audience to listen to them, I was so absorbed into the music, I couldn't think of taking photos..)

I was a little too tired by the first deadline for the first performance (it came quite all of a sudden, and I panicked!!), but I surely had so much fun. It is still on-going project and I still have a lot to do about it, but I am truly grateful for this great and exciting opportunity. A million thanks for the awesome musicians from New York Classical Symphony Ensemble and the composer Byungjin Kim who invited me to join the great project.