Lin returns for lecture

The Iraq War came to a rhetorical end Monday night inside Sweeney Hall.

Composer Jie-Sun Lim, who earned her Ph.D. in composition from IU in 1990, returned to give a lecture to Jacobs School of Music students and faculty.

“I am very pleased to be back in 23 years,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about theory or background. I just want to talk about inspiration I got.”

Lim, who shared compositions from across her career, captured the audience with her soft voice. She played video clips and audio files of her symphonic constructions.

Her group of peons sat in quiet, stoic observation.

Some nodded their heads to the rhythm of the music. Others jotted in notebooks of lined music staffs. One student traced the air with his hand.

The former Fulbright Research Scholar discussed how she took an idea, such as Iraq War violence, and translated her thoughts on the subject into an abstract musical composition.

Lim said her 2008 piece “Gayageum Concerto,” which begins violently and ends in harmony, expresses her desires for “universal sympathy” in the turmoil-ridden Middle East. She said the piece sought a possibility to find reconciliation and harmony between cultures.

The meaning of the piece culminated with a trip to Israel, she said.

“At that time, I was very happy to be in Israel,” Lim said. “I was hesitant, but decided
to go there, because it might have been the perfect time for the piece.”

The 18-minute video of its performance merited a raucous applause from the audience.
“This is the turning point in my musical language,” she said. “After this point, I became free.”

Other pieces in Lim’s lecture included “Shadow of Shadow,” a work inspired by repurposed, dead tree stumps, and “A Poem About Spring,” a piano solo written to be extremely challenging for its performer.

A five-minute video of the solo’s performance left some of the audience in awe. A few students shook their heads and sighed as the pianist pounded away at rapid speed.

Someone near the front exclaimed “Wow!” as the solo came to a close.

Lim wrote “A Poem About Spring” for the 2008 Seoul International Music Competition and said she was surprised when many of the judges described her music as European.

“I never thought my music was European or American or Korean because I always thought my music was my own,” she said.

Don Freund, a Jacobs School composition professor and department chairman, introduced Lim to the group of about 50 in attendance.

“A lot of things are going on in contemporary music today,” he said. “The composers who had been much more rigorous, austere and abstract are kind of finding their soul. This is just another example. She’s beautifully captured that.”