|
He's now a professor of conducting and the music director of the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale, but when Hahm Shin-ik left Korea for the United States in 1984 he had just US$200 in his pocket. A fresh graduate of a Korean university, he was heading abroad to learn conducting. The pastor's son persuaded his parents that if they would just let him go he would be able take care of himself once he got there. In the U.S. he held part-time jobs as a waiter, truck driver and an accupressurist in order to continue his master's and doctoral studies at Rice University and the Eastman School of Music. He finally became a professor at Yale in 1995. He is now visiting Korea with the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale for a concert at the Seoul Arts Center on July 20 at 2:30 p.m.
"Unlike the other Ivy League schools on the East Coast, Yale has art, music and drama schools. Students who want a double major in art with a humanities or science degree come to Yale as its studies are more wide-ranging than the music-only Julliard or Curtis Institute of Music," Hahm says.
 |
|
Hahm Shin-ik
|
 |
|
The Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale, which Hahm also conducts, consists of 150 graduate students from the Yale School of Music. As a student orchestra, its members take eight hours of orchestral music classes a week. "The students spend more time with me than studying with other professors," he says. They hold nine regular concerts a year performing works by composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Krzysztof Penderecki, Gustav Mahler and Anton Bruckner.
There are no midterms or final exams in Hahm's conducting class. Instead there are two conducting contests per semester, and all students are both participants and judges. "We choose the best and the most-improved conductors, and as a prize the winners receive a baton and a spaghetti meal cooked by myself at my place," Hahm says with a grin.
Hahm himself is not a graduate of Yale. "I didn't go to one of those so-called prestigious universities in Korea, nor did I go to an arts middle school or high school." He started learning the piano as third grader and in his sophomore year of high school he made up his mind to major in music. But he says students shouldn't give up their dreams over a university diploma. "More important is one's passion," he says. "I still have a dream of conducting the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra."
In Seoul, his orchestra will perform Beethoven's Concerto for violin in D Major, Op. 61 (with violinist Chang Sun-mi) and Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95 "From the New World."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
|
