[시흥 AGAIN] Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

Kwak Dakung, relaxed and in the pocket on a classic blues: "Now's the Time"

To the Moon! [She's becoming a young woman]

The song was written in 1954 as "In Other Words." It was recorded by various artists and in 1963 Peggy Lee convinced the composer, Bart Howard, to change the name to "Fly Me to the Moon." An instrumental version by Joe Harnell became a hit in 1963 and won a Grammy, but it's the 1964 recording by Frank Sinatra that I'm most familiar with. Sinatra was backed by Count Basie, with an arrangement by Quincy Jones. That version subsequently became associated with the Apollo Space program.

The only thing I can tell you about this version is that the trumpeter is young Kwak DaKyung, whom I've been following for a number of years. The male vocalist owes a debt to Sinatra, though I don't think Sinatra ever performed in shades. The female vocalist is an excellent scat singer.

From the Wikipedia article:

By 1995, the song had been recorded more than 300 times. According to a poll conducted by Japanese music magazine CD&DL Data in 2016 about the most representative songs associated with the Moon, the cover versions by Claire Littley and Yoko Takahashi ranked 7th by 6,203 respondents. The Claire cover version won the Planning Award of Heisei Anisong Grand Prize among the anime theme songs from 1989 to 1999, following its appearance in the end credits of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

From Sinatra in 1964, to the moon a couple years later, to Japanese anime at the end of the century.

Now, sit back for a moment and ponder the fact that that very American song from the mid-20th Century is being performed in 2024 by a Korean jazz combo featuring a 14 year old trumpet player. I'm waiting for her to cut loose. I wonder when?

Kwak Dakyung plays the s**t out of "Autumn Leaves" a capella [& she's only 14]

On Being a Virtual Exotic Uncle [my Korean trumpet niece]

In the early days of the internet’s available to the general public, as opposed to the military, for whom it had originally been created as ARPANET, there was considerable earnest discussion over whether or not it would amount to anything. Could people do, you know, REAL things over the internet, get REAL work done, have REAL relationships with other people. We now know that the answer to all of those questions is YES.

The internet has certainly been important to me. As a scholar and thinker without any academic affiliation it has made possible an intellectual life that would otherwise have been all but impossible. But that’s not what this is about – thought if you’re curious about that, check out Personal Observations on Entering an Age of Computing Machines. This is about something more intimate and personal.

Back in the early days of the academic blogosphere, which has all but disappeared beneath the traffic on social media, I hung out at Michael Bérubé’s blog, American Airspace, which has now disappeared, though you should probably find traces of it through the Wayback Machine. There I met Bruce Simon, online at the time as The Constructivist, who was with his family in Japan on a Fullbright. He would post photos of his two young daughters at one of his blogs, Mostly Harmless. Before you knew it I was posing Gojochan (a small plastic Godzilla figure) and Sparkychan (a colorful plush doll) for those daughters. That activity grew and grew until it became The Collected Adventures of Sparkychan & Cojochan (Thus Far). (I tell this story in greater detail in this post.)

And that’s how I became a virtual exotic uncle to two young Japanese American girls living in Japan. The oldest is now in college and the younger will be going next year. I’ve never met them in real life, nor their father for that matter, though we keep tabs on one another through social media. But there’s some kind of real relationship three, not deep and strong by any means, but real nonetheless.

More recently I’ve been following the YouTube videos of Kwak DaKyung, a Korean trumpet prodigy who started playing when she was quite young.

She was eleven when I first ran into her videos. Trumpet prodigies are rare, probably because it is so difficult to get a sound out of the instrument. In contrast getting sounds out of the violin or piano is easy; playing those instruments well, that’s a different matter. Moreover, she was interested in jazz. So I’ve followed her quite closely, and wrote a blog post in which I examined eight of her videos.

I also commented on her videos, often with very specific comments about what she was doing. In that way I developed a relationship with her father, who ran her YouTube channel, and indirectly with her. Sometimes we would have a little conversation, back and forth, in the comments section of her videos. Then, a bit earlier this month, her father post of video with just the two of them playing “It’s You or No One,” a jazz standard.

It was excellent. Even before it was finished I was moved to comment: “Love it from the beginning. Nice tempo, nice bounce.” As it finished I realized that I’d heard something else, a new maturity in her playing (after all, she’s now 13!): “Do I hear a young woman emerging from the chrysalis?”

It's a wonderful age we’re living it. Mixed up and crazy and scary, but wonderful. And to be an exotic uncle for young girls half way around the globe, is that not fantastic, the stuff dreams are made on?

A young woman is born

Listen to the confidence in her playing

Kids and Music 6: Get Aboard Henry Lau’s Freestyle Express [Born to Groove]

Let’s pick up where we left off with my previous post on Lau, Born to Groove, Kids and Music 3: Henry Lau has a good heart & knows how to work with kids [kawaii alert!]. We know he was born in Canada to Chinese parents and was headed for a career in classical music when SM Entertainment sent him to K-Pop stardom. Last year he started a series of videos in which he appeared with various young Korean musicians, Henry Together. My earlier post featured a young violinist, YoEun Seol. I also covered his work with Kwak Dakyung, a young jazz musician, at the end of my previous post in this series.

Henry worked with twelve musicians in the first season of Henry Together. Now we’re ready for a second season. But first...

Music Genius friends from Henry Together

Some of the musicians from the first season got together and did a collaborative performance of one of Henry’s songs, “Trust Your Face.” The music was arranged and the project coordinated by the guitarist, Sean Song.

Listen to how all the voices and instruments work and coordinate together.

Kids these days!

Now we’re ready for the first post of Season two, after which we’ll return to season one. It’s confusing, I know, but this isn’t about chronology.

Can We Do A Concert Through Zoom?

They’re all on screen chatting with Henry. Have they become a community? Henry suggests they get together and perform that tune that we’ve all heard a jillion times, “Canon in D.”

And so Henry leads them through putting an arrangement together. I don’t know whether or not it simply happened online Just Like That, or whether there’s been some behind the scenes work, and how much editing has been done. None of that really matters. What matters is that Henry is showing us that music doesn’t just fall from the sky. It has to be planned out and arranged.

So they give it a try (at about 3:32). Sounds a bit disorganized, no? Still, Henry is encouraging. They give it another try (about 4:24). They run through it, but we don’t hear most of it. They finish, Henry’s encouraging, but they all know better. After all, they are good musicians. They’re not fooled by this well-intended positivity. They work on things and we get the finished version, with Henry joining on violin (about 6:01).

Henry’s family having a little recital

Let’s leave Henry Together for a minute and see him with family and friends. His brother plays some stride (boogie-woogie), with Henry joining. His mother sits down at the piano, then his father.

Nine Year Old Piano Prodigy’s Fast Hands

Let's return to the first season of Henry Together. Henry meets young pianist, Seo Yul Shin in episode 6.

They chat. She tells Henry she’s ten “this year” (c. 2:04) and that she’s seen every episode of Henry Together. And she thinks that she’s a better pianist than Jichan (Episode 1). What does she want to eat? Chicken. He orders two fried chickens.

She says she was nervous in the car coming over, but not now. It’s cool “to see someone from TV sit right in front of me” (2:51). Ah, the melding of two worlds, TV world and the Real World. He brings in the chicken and they eat – as you may know by know, sharing a meal is part of Henry’s protocol for these meetings. And then, out of nowhere, she asks him his blood type (3:14): “Just the ideal type for a lot of people,” a remark she regards with well-justified bemusement. I'm sure many of Henry's fans want to know the answer to that question, but a ten-year old? Back to eating and more chit-chat. They talk about music lessons and stuff. “More cola?”

To music. She plays Chopin, Waltz No. 3, aka “Cat Waltz” (about 5:07). When she’s finished we hear off-screen clapping. Henry’s impressed. How does she react? “I made a lot of mistakes.” She may be a child, but you don’t get as good as she is without being rigorously self-critical.

Henry suggests that they play some Paganini together, remarking that eye contact is very important in collaboration (c. 7:13). After they’ve finished Henry gives the piano a glissando from the upper register down. She follows, doing it in the middle-to-lower register. “I’ve never tried scraping before.” “You’ve never done this? Try again. Mom’s not watching, right? Because my mom didn’t let me do this stuff either.” They play around until they get together on a gliss and a final note.

She starts playing a Piazolla tango (8:26). Henry joins in on violin (reading music laying on the piano), occasionally having intonation problems. I can’t really tell whether he’s sharp or flat, but he’s definitely a bit off here and there. But who cares? They’re getting acquainted. At the end she throws in a gliss to a high note.

Now Henry gets serious (at about 9:31). “Let’s just play what we feel.” She’s puzzled. He shows her, playing some arpeggios on the keyboard. She follows. “You’ve only been playing off the sheet music so far. Forget the sheet music for now. Today you just play what you feel. So far you practice a ton and you try to be perfect, but music is also about being free.” He works with her a little. She plays two hands. Henry joins in, one hand. They stop. Chat a bit. Start again, she’s on piano, he’s on violin. The video ends.

See what he’s going? Do you understand why I’ve entitled this post Henry Lau’s Freestyle Express?

Henry and Piano Prodigy Perform a New Song

Here’s their performance. They open with one of many sets of variations on something by Paganini – ending with that glissando she learned from Henry. Then Seo Yul Shin plays a solo (don’t recognize it, couldn’t make out the title on the screen), and another, Chopin’s “Cat Waltz.”

They conclude with the song they made up during their “getting to know you” phase (6:30). She decided to call it “Wind.”

Season One Reunion

Henry opened season two with a reunion of the musicians from the first season. Here it is almost without comment. Henry does say that he learned from his young prodigies, that they forced him to new music. Any reason to doubt him? No.

Coaching Bonus

Henry is doing a lot of coaching with these young musicians. I have two other posts involving coaching:

An interesting example of vocal coaching, Oct. 16, 2014, https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/10/an-interesting-example-of-vocal-coaching.html.

Ride the Lizard, Valkyrie, Ride It!, November 15, 2013, http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2013/11/music-ride-lizard-valkyrie-ride-it.html.

Kids and Music 5: Kwak DaKyung, Jazz Trumpeter [Born to Groove]

While I’m not sure it makes much sense to say that one musical instrument is more difficult to play than another, getting a sound out of, say, a violin or a piano is easy, while getting a sound out of a trumpet is difficult. Anyone can press keys on a piano keyboard; even kittens can do it, but did you ever hear a kitten play the trumpet? And while kittens don’t play violins, even very young children can do so. Thus you will find many videos on YouTube of young children playing the violin or piano, often astonishingly well. But you won’t hear many videos of young children playing the trumpet, at all.

Kwak Dakyung, a young Korean girl, is an exception. Here she is playing the trumpet at a very young age:

Notice that she rests her trumpet on a stand. In a year or two she won’t need the stand and her tone will improve.

Confirmation

It did. This video was uploaded on March 30, 2021. She’s fronting a jazz quartet playing Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation.”

Charlie Parker was one of the inventors of bebop, a jazz style that emerged in the early 1940s. It emphasized rhythmic complexity, angular melodic lines, and instrumental virtuosity.

Many regard “Confirmation” as one of Parker’s best original tunes. While it is based on a standard AABA harmonic foundation (each letter stands for eight bars of music), the melody is more complex, more like ABCA, where the final eight bars start out like the first eight, but the final four bars are different, both harmonically and melodically. The melody is complex – wide intervals, complex phrases – and thus is difficult to play smoothly.

Dakyung (her given name) plays the melody well; she has mastered its rhythmic complexity. She improvises well too. If you aren’t familiar with the tune, you might not even know when she starts improvising (at about 0:51). The repeated figures at 1:08 are nice, and she marks the bridge well (1:08). Notice the repeated figure she uses at the opening of the last eight (1:25). The way she opens her second chorus is brilliant (about 1:34). It is simple, obvious, and common to conclude one phase at the end of the chorus and then begin the next chorus with a new phrase. Dakyung does something much more interesting. She creates an ascending phrase in the last bar (of the first chorus) which reaches its apex at the beginning of the second chorus. It then starts down, in effect, becoming a new phrase. The initial phrase of the second chorus thus serves two function: 1) it continues a phrase from the previous chorus while 2) also initiating a new chorus.

I could go on, but I’ve made my point: she’s thinking about music in a sophisticated way.

Carnival of Venice

Her performance of “Carnival of Venice” is a different kettle of fish. Flashy? Yes. But the foundation isn’t quite there yet. She's young and hasn't had time to build up the endurance required to perform this.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Back in the 19th century Niccolo Paganini, the famous violin virtuoso, took a simple folk tune and elaborated it with twenty variations, entitling the final composition “Il Carnevale Di Venezia.” The theme was then picked up by other instruments and provided with virtuoso accouterments and horseplay appropriate to each. A French cornet virtuoso named Jean-Baptiste Arban wrote a set of variations which he included in his method book, Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet, which is perhaps the core pedagogical book for ‘classical’ style trumpet and cornet.

Arban’s set of variations on “Carnival of Venice” has thus become a rite of passage for students of the trumpet. Accordingly, you will find many performances of it on YouTube. Some are by well-known virtuosi of the past and present – Sergei Nakariakov, Wynton Marsalis, Maurice André, and Timofei Dokshizer for example – while others are by relatively unknown professionals and advanced students. Some of these performances are better than others, but all of them are brilliant.

That’s the point of the piece, brilliance. But interesting music it is not. “Confirmation,” for example, with its rapid chord changes, complex melody, and off-kilter rhythms, is much more interesting. “Carnival of Venice” is a virtuoso display piece in which the soloist goes a few rounds with Mike Tyson, tight-rope walks over Niagara Falls, rescues a young child from an out-of-control Tesla on full-automatic, leaps tall buildings with a single bound, and threads a needle with a drunken sailor.

That’s the musical mosh pit Kwak Dakyung entered when she performed Arban’s “Carnival of Venice” when ten years old. This was uploaded on December 4, 2019:

Impressive? Yes, alas, for a child.

I began getting worried at about 2:56; the tempo seemed a little slow, not quite up to the mosh pit standard. My worries increased at about 3:52; we’re still a little slow, and this variation involves wide interval leaps from the middle to the lower register, which are difficult. The bottom notes were there, but not speaking loudly enough. At 4:10 we have the first displays of double-tonguing – don’t worry about just what that is; it’s difficult and you put points on the board if you do it well. (But I never heard Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker’s brother in bebop, double tongue. If Dizzy doesn’t qualify as a trumpet virtuoso, the term has no meaning.) And then, whoops!, at about 4:45 some notes don’t speak at all. It passes quickly and you probably wouldn’t notice if you weren’t intimately familiar with this music. Then at 4:49, another flubbed passage, but it passes quickly. And so it goes.

Let’s skip to the very end. She’s finishing a variation that punctuates rapid twiddley figures in the middle register with rapid wide-interval leaps into the bottom register. Those leaps burn your chops and tax your air supply. They are exhausting, especially coming at the end of a long and taxing blow. This is the point where you act like you could keep playing for hours no sweat! if it weren’t for the fact that the stage hands would have to be paid double-overtime, which would break the budget. Of course you can’t actually do that. You’re almost dead. But you’ve got to put on a show. And she’s not quite up to it. She’s exhausted. You can hear her reach for breaths (c. 9:24 and after) and her tongue staggers just a bit at the end. 

Here's the point: Minor faults like those would be of little consequence in a jazz improvisation where everything else is fine, the rhythm is sure and the melodic line is fluid. In that context technique is subordinate to imagination and soulfulness. In a piece like “Carnival of Venice,” however, technical brilliance is the focus of the piece, its reason for being. In this context even minor technical flaws undermine the performance.

There’s no doubt in my mind that in a couple of years she will be able to paint the town red with her technical brilliance. But she might have more fun working on the repertoire that the great Rafael Mendez left behind. The sheet music is readily available and there are plenty of Mendez clips on YouTube – I don’t know about availability on CD, much less vinyl. The music is full of technical challenges and, best of all, it’s real music, not stunt music. Mendez’s repertoire will help her develop her musicality, not just her technique.

Back to jazz. 

[See the coda at the end for a different performance of “Carnival of Venice”.]

All the Things You Are

“All the Things You Are” is a show tune from 1939 that quickly became a favorite of jazz musicians because it puts some interesting twists on the standard 32-bar AABA form. Once again DaKyung fronts a quartet. This performance was uploaded on April 15, 2021:

I won’t belabor this performance with long commentary, but I would like to note the transition into her second improvised chorus, starting at about 1:34. It’s a sequence of 4-note arpeggios followed by a short descending figure that lands her exactly on the first note of her second improvised chorus as 1:40. I don’t know whether she worked it out in advance or just hit upon it in process – both are possible – but it is very clever. She was clearly anticipating that transition. She closes out the second chorus with some nice runs at about 2:17 and after. After the piano solo, starting at 5:06, she leads the group in trading phrases with the drummer before the final chorus. Notice that the piano player tosses in a line based on “Fly Me to the Moon,” one of DaKyung’s favorite tunes.

She’s not just running through the chord changes in a quasi-mechanical way. She’s a very thoughtful musician.