The award-winning Shea-Kim duo - violinist Brendan Shea and pianist Yerin Kim - have been performing together for over a decade. They have toured across North America, Europe and South Korea, and have won gold medals at the Manhattan International Music Competition and the Ackerman Chamber Music Competition. On November 12, 2021 their new album, The Sound and the Fury, was released on Blue Griffin Recording. We spoke to them about the album, the changing role of pianist as accompanist, maintaining a healthy work-life balance, and so much more.
You’ve been living together as a married couple, and playing together for many years. How and when did you decide to form the Shea-Kim duo?
Brendan: Yerin and I have been in trios since we were undergraduates at Oberlin and have always enjoyed playing together. When I was accepted to the 2015 Queen Elisabeth Competition, Yerin agreed to play with me since there was so much repertoire to learn and it was very difficult. We realized we actually really enjoyed learning duo repertoire and that there was a lot of depth to the process.
How do you manage balancing the different components of your life as musical partners, life partners and parents of two young children?
Brendan: Our kids have already spent much of their life backstage, or playing while mom and dad rehearse. We can thankfully rehearse and record very late (2-3 am sometimes) without waking them. That being said, it takes careful and meticulous schedule planning when we have concert tours, as well as ability to improvise when needed. It is definitely difficult to separate work from life sometimes, but luckily we love our work and feel privileged to be able to spend so much time together and as a family.
Yerin: Brendan and I have known each other for 16 years now. We met as young college kids and have had the luxury of dreaming and building our lives together. I am very grateful for that and all the steps that come with it. It’s definitely challenging to balance so many components in life that we share but I think the sense of partnership over ownership allows us to balance things with more serenity and ease. Both Brendan and I also have full time university jobs which makes figuring out schedules even more complicated but we are lucky that we love what we do, love our jobs, and have wonderful children who seem to not mind their parents playing music all the time.
The fact that you chose to call your collaboration a ‘duo’ points to the role of the piano as an equal partner. How do you, as an ensemble, approach the repertoire differently than a solo instrument with piano accompaniment?
Brendan: Certainly the past century has treated sonatas and other repertoire for violin and piano as a soloist with an accompanist. I think this attitude has been steadily changing, especially recently. The truth is the composers of this incredible music were primarily pianists, and the music must be learned and understood from the piano score to be played to their full effectiveness.
Yerin: We played in a trio for many years before playing our first sonata together so our approach to working together was largely influenced by our chamber music experience before we started playing as a duo. There is such a rich body of duo works, old and new, that we love playing so it’s fun choosing repertoire that speaks to us. Usually those works tend to have an equal partnership and create synergy. We also both tend to get obsessive over what we like so inevitably everything we play becomes very personal. There’s not much opportunity for one of us to be “accompanimental” for the better or for the worse...both in music and in life!
In the liner notes you write “this recording is a reflection of our personalities and character through the great works of [Grieg, Janacek, and Dvorak]”. Tell us a little more about that.
Brendan: Picking repertoire for a concert is very difficult, and picking repertoire for our inaugural studio recording was even more so. There is so much great music, and music that feels personal. Yerin and I are opposite in many ways, which makes for intense and passionate rehearsals. I also think it makes us better musicians; that the intensity of the process creates a product greater than the sum of its parts. What these pieces have in common is that they are full of color, contrast, and passion. They are works that have come in and out of our repertoire since we formed, and have stuck out as works we feel reflect our energy on stage.
Yerin: One of the things that I love most about playing with Brendan is listening to how he expresses things so differently even when we feel similarly. Brendan and I have very different tastes in style, personality, character, and yet we somehow think and feel alike.
It’s quite amusing to me. When we can’t come to an agreement in rehearsals, we try going back to understanding the composer as our third partner. That usually does the trick. These works that we chose in our first album highlighted these differences and similarities of our colors, emotions, and also our love for these great works.
Each of the works on this program incorporate folk melodies in some form. Tell us about the different styles and ways that Janacek, Grieg, and Dvorak incorporate the folk melodies.
Brendan: Each composer lived during a time when national and individual identity were intertwined in a very substantial way. Using folk, or common melodies had been around for centuries earlier, but these composers opted to actually make these folk traditions an important part of their musical language. Janacek’s language feels more connected to linguistic syntax, a musical reflection of spoken word. Dvorak takes his folk melodies and dresses them down to motivic size so they are well camouflaged in his harmonic language. Grieg will often use a direct quote, somewhat closer to the way Bruch might, and then allows it to germinate and fill out.
Yerin: Now that I have children and have heard more children's songs than I had ever imagined I would, I fully understand the power of an earworm. It’s wonderful how all three composers incorporate folk melodies as ingredients that we can easily taste and transform them into a totally different pallet.
What non-musical activities/hobbies do you do to unwind?
Brendan: I would say most of our time not being spent on our work is spent with our kids. I’ve grown to really enjoy cooking in the past few years, although cooking for kids is an exercise in futility (the better the food, the less they like it).
Yerin: I remember having hobbies!! Now I just really enjoy cooking and eating with the kids and Brendan. It’s so satisfying seeing your family devour your food. I’m not much of a baker though so whenever I bake, the kids have a really entertaining time being amused at my creations that are barely edible. We also just moved to Washington state where we are surrounded by mountains. It’s so beautiful and I love staring at them! Brendan and kids like to hike.but I grew up in Seoul, Korea, so hiking is still pretty foreign to me.
Where can audiences see you next? Tell us about the duo’s plans for 2022.
Brendan: We have an East Coast tour in March 2022, as well as summer festivals and concerts in the Seattle area. For the most recent information you can follow us on Facebook or check out shea-kimduo.com!
Yerin: We have our solo concerts and projects throughout the year but as a duo we will be in the East Coast in Spring.