Kevin Lee Sun delivers an electrifying call to action in THE PEOPLE UNITED, a monumental set of 36 variations by the late American composer Frederic Rzewski. Its theme originated in Chile when composer Sergio Ortega heard the soul-stirring chants in Santiago, months before the 1973 Chilean coup d’etat. Inspired by Ortega’s music and Chile’s upheavals, Rzewski combined the chant with revolutionary songs from various cultures to deliver a clear message of solidarity in his 1975 hour-long masterpiece, eponymously named The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
Today, Kevin is our featured artist in the “Inside Story,” a blog series exploring the inner workings and personalities of our composers and performers. Read on to learn about the inspiration he draws from experiencing art made by friends, and the various aspects he hopes listeners will discover within his Navona Records release…
If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing?
I’ve always been interested in other cultures, ancient civilizations, and people whose customs are so different that it makes you rethink everything. So perhaps I’d be an archaeologist, a foreign affairs journalist, or a diplomat. (Although, I’m probably a bit too fiery for successful diplomacy!)
If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be?
I’ve had really fruitful collaborations already with my dear friend based in San Francisco named Angela Liu, who has immense talent in the visual arts. Her own interests and projects have often previsaged my musical concepts. But if it has to be someone else, it sounds a little basic but probably installation artists like James Terrell or teamLab, who could provide a different dimension to my music-making.
What emotions do you hope listeners will experience after hearing your work?
Uneasiness, searching, energy with a little freneticism, compassion, resolution — an emotional narrative of some sort, though not always a nice and pleasant one.
Where and when are you at your most creative?
Connections leading to creativity form spontaneously with no real ritual. But experiencing art made by friends whom I love is undoubtedly inspiring. Reading the news and absorbing others’ stories are processes that help initial ideas fractalize into musical programs and projects. Apple’s Notes app has been my conduit for all of these thoughts for years.
What are your other passions besides music?
Music is simply the medium that I chose to act on my larger passions of understanding other people, appreciating their differences, and helping them. For the same reasons, I’ve done research in child and adolescent psychiatry, and I’ve studied and written about ancient Greek pedagogical texts (Plato, Archimedes, etc.).
What musical mentor had the greatest impact on your artistic journey? Is there any wisdom they’ve imparted onto you that still resonates today?
That would be Thomas Schultz, my piano teacher at Stanford, and a real artist who has performed music by Cage, Stockhausen, Rzewski, Wolff, Hyo-shin Na, and so many other great composers of the 20th century. He opened my mind to music beyond the traditional canon, and guided me to appreciate the unusual. I learned just as much from his readings of poetry and his recommendations of films, as I did from his suggestions and demonstrations at the piano. Trying to encapsulate his wisdom as pithy aphorisms somehow feels almost antithetical to how he taught me to think and to question.
With “probing seriousness” (Performing Arts Monterey Bay) and “a stunningly beautiful palette of colors” (Peninsula Reviews), pianist Kevin Lee Sun interprets music old and new. In 2011, Sun won the Silver Medal at the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition in California for his performances of the classical canon. In 2021, for his visionary programming of 20th-century music, he was the sole pianist to be named Finalist of the Berlin Prize for Young Artists in Germany. These honors have led Sun to perform a diverse repertoire around the world, including at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, the Villa Elisabeth in Berlin, and the Banff Centre in Canada.
