Trying to write songs! Still getting used to how my voice sounds. Please listen with headphones.

Help me break the pattern of the centuries way before me
Of narcissistic men preying on your self-esteem and your body

Why do I attract broken people, why is loving you oh so evil, when do we begin to fall apart? 
Why did you have to be so deceitful, why couldn’t we all just be equal, why do you rely on me to repair you?
Sleepless nights and crying endlessly, holding in all this anxiety, while you talk to your friends who barely saw me
Constant arguments that you’d always win, loneliness that’s caused by your gaslighting, compassion that’s returned for your deliberate conniving

So this why I think before speaking, knowing that you’re always listening, and criticizing the things I have to say
But you’d go on on and on talking about philosophy and your pessimistic views
Meanwhile friends would sit around you, captivated and yet confused
But the worst thing they’d do, is turn theirs eyes to you and say I guess you silently support his view
But all I thought to myself was “fuck you”

Why do I attract broken people, why is loving you oh so evil, when do we begin to fall apart? 
Why did you have to be so deceitful, why couldn’t we all just be equal, why do you rely on me to repair you?
Sleepless nights and crying endlessly, holding in all this anxiety, while you talk to your friends who barely saw me
Constant arguments that you’d always win, loneliness that’s caused by your gaslighting, compassion that’s returned for your deliberate conniving

Break the Pattern

PERFORMERS:
Jacob Schafer, violin
Nathan Lowry, violin
Catherine Chen, viola
Otávio Manzano Kavakama, cello
Derek Wang, piano

PROGRAM NOTE:
Piano Quintet No. 1, “Things people have said about death” is my attempt at processing and understanding grief through borrowing other people’s words. Or rather music.

My grandmother passed away in March 2022. After her passing, I felt that sometimes my own words were not enough to express what I was feeling. The sorrow, the emptiness, and the anger were so much bigger than I could comprehend. So I decided to look at how the composers of the past generations that I admire dealt with death and grief in their music. In this piece, you’ll hear quotations of the funeral march from Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, and many other pieces in the canon that don’t necessarily have to do with death. But I realized all of the pieces I quoted are integral to my musical tapestry of right now, and it only made sense to bring in those pieces to talk about someone who is very important to me.

MOVEMENTS:
I. Soup
II. March
III. Dance

PERFORMANCE HISTORY:
Piano Quintet No. 1, "Things people have said about death" was commissioned and premiered by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble in Aspen, CO in August 2022.

Piano Quintet No. 1, "Things people have said about death"

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♬BERKOP Radio :: 아이팟 1화

Read by the Oberlin College Choir in May 2018

Autumn Reflections

Composer
Yale School of Music '21
Oberlin Conservatory '18

Piano Quintet No. 1, "Things people have said about death"

Soomin Kim

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