Jeeyoon Kim aims to play classical music for everyone. That’s a goal shared by a lot of musicians and projects, to extend the reach of classical music to listeners who don’t normally go to concert halls for symphony concerts or chamber music recitals. It usually means the kind of crossover thing that has an orchestra playing movie music, or an operatic vocalist recording Christmas songs.

But Kim has different ideas, and her latest is a project titled 시음 /si-úm/ (pronounced shee-oom), which is both a self-released album and a concert performance that she is taking on a 30-city tour that opened in San Diego and comes to Carnegie Hall on June 7. In 시음 /si-úm/, Kim plays well-known music from the classical repertoire, including Andante spianato et grande polonaise brillante in E-flat major, Op. 22, several short Debussy works, including the famous Reflets dans l’eau, Scarlatti, Rachmaninoff, and others—all music that shows what a skilled pianist can do with the instrument.

Words and Music

But what seems a standard classical recital program is something very different; a multimedia experience that is as much about words as music. Kim pairs poetry with each piece of music in a flowing and continuous mix of spoken word and piano playing. It’s storytelling with music, and it’s for classical music lovers of course, but mainly it’s for people who, most of all, want to hear a story.

“My mission as a pianist is always to create a bridge between myself as a performer and the audience,” Kim explains over a recent Zoom connection, “and find ways to deliver this in the best way.” She had previously mixed projected images with her live playing (and there is a visual component to 시음 /si-úm/ that will, due to the characteristics of the space, be absent at Weill Recital Hall, but will in the program book), and the pandemic left her looking for something new.

“I was in search of another project,” she says. “I always thought music, it's like poetry, poetry is like music, and I love the process of it, maybe you can write it overnight, but then it's all about revising, going back to it, keep thinking about it.” She sees a mirror in classical music: “I play the piece that 200 years ago, people were playing multiple times, and I’m practicing every day, trying to find the treasure within and how to express it in the best way. I wanted to play, perhaps with poetry, and I wasn't sure how.”

The Musician and the Poet

She consulted with poets, and even commissioned some new writing, none of which satisfied what she was looking for. Language was a part of it, as she explains: “I really had a difficult time because English isn’t my primary language. Also, I didn't grow up with the poetry world.” Looking for insight, she reached out to San Diego Poet Laureate Ron Salisbury, who helped her, through emotional connections, map the music she was playing to poetry.

Salisbury “gave me a confirmation, saying that, ’It’s more about you giving an experience to the people as a pianist, what resonates with you the most, it's more about the music and the poem comes with it to set the tone.’ So then I really let go the idea of looking for the best poem that ever existed, but more what resonates with this particular piece.” From there, she put together the poetic part of the program, all writing from the past 100 years, including what she estimates as a quarter of it newly commissioned for 시음 /si-úm/. Her own poetry is in the title, a word she created that blends the Korean words for poetry and music.

Connecting

In the performance, Kim puts everything on stage, including the context. Though the restrictions at Weill means that images will be in the program booklet rather than on the stage, she points out that she usually doesn’t use programs at all. With a microphone on the stage, she says she “guides each piece … I recite the poem, there is some storytelling from within my life”—including her grandmother in North Korea and Kim’s own experiences taking up surfing in California—“that matches the moods of the piece,” and then she plays. “It’s not theater, but the storytelling is very strong.”

The album experience is of course different, but not just that she’s not there live—Kim has designed it to inspire the listener to their own actions: “I created postcards with the black and white photography that matches with each piece of music. There's a QR code there, you listen to my album, along with the poetry and the photography, and think of someone and write a note to that person, so the project might start with me, but it ends on your side.”

As Kim says, the storytelling is not about theater, it’s about connection with the performer. And the connection is for the listener who is unfamiliar with classical music. “I don't expect anyone who never heard any of this music before to get it on the first listening, but how we can narrow that gap with the audience?” Kim’s answer is that “the performer comes out, not talking about historical context, but about how they feel about this music and what it means to them.

“And I find that the beauty of storytelling is that, whether now or 300 years ago, storytelling is the most powerful tool that the classical musician could use to connect with the audience. And I think about how and what I’m going to say as much as I practice piano. My way of talking,” in performance, “is poetry, it is the performance itself.”

This all comes down to a remarkable level of trust Kim has with her audiences. Like with the album version of the project, the concert leaves much in the audience’s hands. “I'm merely a tour guide of this particular program, I am just giving my experience as strongly as possible,” she says. “If my connection with the music is strong, it's inevitable that the music will speak for itself to the audience, and the audience will think of something” that she herself never imagined. “And, that” she points out, “is their art.

“I think the beauty of classical music is that the interpretation may start from me,” but it ends in the listener’s experiences. “So for the music I am merely a messenger and that music will speak directly to the soul of each listener,” and she wants the listener to take it into themself as personally as possible. “Then it’s their turn. All I can do is deliver as strongly as I can what I connected with in the piece in the way that I know the best, and the rest of it is just the gift that I can offer.”

Discover More