Attracted by the Piano

Like there are many kinds of art techniques that have its own characteristic and beauty, Music has many musical instruments that can express its own beauty or characteristics by the sound. Do you have any musical instruments that you can play? What is your favorite instrument? In my case, the only thing that I can play is the piano and that’s why the piano is one of the favorite instruments for me. (Though I really like the guitar, I cannot play it L)

It is hard to come up with the pianists except someone who is very popular such as Beethoven, Mozart etc. I also do not know many pianists but I have one whom I really like. Therefore, from now on, I am going to introduce him and his music briefly. His name is Yi Ru Ma who is a well known pianist for the new age genre (Sooooorry, I either not know the exact meaning of the new age. May be we can figure out the meaning later J). River flows in you that I uploaded above is one of the representative music of him. When you listen to the music, I am sure that you can feel some emotions coming into you because the ability that melts emotions and feelings into the music pieces is Yi Ru Ma’s strength. For me, when I listen or play his pieces, I always could feel some emotions from each music piece. Because of him, the pattern of my playing that usually focus on accompaniment for songs (piano was just the sidekicks for songs) not a piano piece itself changed to find and play piano pieces. In other words, I recognized the excitement of playing the piano itself not just as the assistance for some pop songs.

Whether you can play the piano or not, I think you can be touched by listening to his music. (I really hope that same things that I experience happened to you guys !) Though I really want to play the guitar these days, it is hard to abandon the piano away because the beauty and the excitement of playing the piano are infinite.

The Pianist

A man who survived under the darkest hour of the mankind

A man who did not give up his soul and life under the irrational brutality of the mankind

A pianist who lost all of the priceless things except passion on his talent

During WWII, a lot of people died anonymously simply because of ideologies, norms, concepts and powers which led whole society to irrationality and wildest massive massacre. The movie that I am going to cover is about a story about the Jew pianist who survived from those harsh conditions and spent the rest of his life with suffering from losses of the war and genocide against the Jews, that is Holocaust. Today, rather than focusing the music itself, I would like to focus on a pianist’s life and humanity.

The movie is based on the true story of the Jew pianist named Szpilman who came through the holocaust. After he died in 2000, his son made public Szpilman’s diary so the movie could be made based on his diary during the WWII period. The film starts with Szpilman’s playing on the Polish radio station. He was the promising pianist in Poland but his life changed completely after beginning of the WWII by the Nazi German attacked Poland. He lost people he loves and went around hiding from the Nazi’s observation. One day, he captured by German military officer and be asked to play the piano. Szpilman played the piano with all his soul and might because he thought it could be the last time of his playing. However, the officer released him and after the war, Szpilman tried to find the officer but he found out the German officer was captured in the Soviet labor camp.

Unlike the other movies that cover WWII focus the war itself, the pianist focuses people’s sorrows and losses from the war by showing one Jew pianists’ harsh life. The movie makes me to come up with some questions; Why did those people need to be suffered, What things that can be acquired from the war, are those things more valuable than the losses of lovers and humanity?

The beauty of globalized mismatch

As we live in a globalized society, cultures that usually distinguished by regions or people become hard to being recognized as a particular group’s product because there are many outside sources from other regions which influence one’s own culture or tradition. For this reason, we can enjoy a number of varieties in cultures in our daily lives. These so called ‘Fusion’ make a plenty of awesome products in many parts such as food, music and so on.

Music is one of the products of mixed culture. It is not hard to watch some music pieces that are composed of various types of musical instruments, melodies, rhythms from different regions and cultures. The video that I am going to mention on today’s blog shows this fusion trend in music. This video was made in 2006 to advertise a construction company that wanted to attain fresh and dynamic images. In the film, it shows musicians, dancers playing and dancing along with the background music. The music consists of B-Boys, Beat Box, DJ and Gayageum which is one of the famous traditional musical instruments in Korea (You may recognize that the background music is ‘Canon variations’). When I first watched the video, it was quite fresh and surprise to see how those contents that seems mismatch are connected together. Though the film was made in 2006, it is well made music video that melts different musical characters into a music piece.

We can enjoy varieties of cultural mixes along with the globalization. There are many criticisms about globalization which influences local cultures and sometimes destroys local traditions. Therefore, it is important to secure one’s own culture under the pressure of globalization but like the film, if we blend cultural differences properly, it can produce other forms of tradition that can show the beauty of local and globalized cultures.

The Chorus

Music is a powerful way that can influence and change people into various different characters. Just as background music decides moods of places such as restaurants and derives particular emotions of people, music impacts people by its melodies, lyrics and so forth. Therefore, today, music is generally used as an educational tool in schools around the world.

Today, I will introduce a movie that shows the power of music that can change a person’s character by being used as an educational subject in school. “The Chorus (Les Choristes)”, the France movie which was released in 2009 attracted the audiences with its touching story and choruses that were covered in the movie. I had a chance to watch this movie because of my sister who was studying French during that time. At first, I did not have much interest since the movie’s genre is not one of my favorites but after few minutes of watching, I found myself that completely fell into the movie.

The movie’s main theme is the story of a music teacher, Papinot, who transferred to a small French rural school where its students consist of disorderly children. While Papinot worked at the school, he was surprised at the school’s inappropriate method to teach students. Therefore, he started to change the school and students through music. He made a school choir and by doing so, students bonded together and were cured their own wounds in minds. It is impressive to see how those disorderly students change and beautiful choruses and harmonies that children made during the movie (They actually sang these song in the movie).



I strongly recommend this movie to you guys because I think you will enjoy the beautiful songs and scenes in the movie. In addition, you can feel warmth in your heart by watching the children’s transition. Don’t miss the chance to see the movie! Just spend 90 minutes, you will find yourself fall into the movie and its beautiful harmony. You will not regret!