Lunar Module with Devon Lee - Part 2

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 144: Lunar Module with Devon Lee - Part 2

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

In this week's episode, we continue our Lunar Module, a mini-series with the E4TT/ Luna Composition Lab Call for Scores winners and commissioned composers. Today we are joined by Devon Lee, who we spoke to in June 2024. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more, check out their music here: https://www.instagram.com/devonian_music/.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano),  in SF, CA on January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), in SF, CA on October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/16681440

Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Addy Geenen, Yoyo Hung-Yu Lin

Chapters

• 0:22 In this week's Lunar Module episode, we continue talking to E4TT Luna Composition Lab, call for scores winner Devon Lee who we spoke to in June 2024.
• 0:33 I was going to ask you how having your feet in two worlds informs your music. And can you talk a little bit more about that and explain also what you mean about coming from a gray place?
• 4:47 I'd like you to circle back and talk a little bit about, and I'm not sure if I'm going to get this word right, Pansori, the traditional Korean music?

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's Lunar Module episode, we continue talking to E4TT Luna Composition Lab, call for scores winner Devon Lee [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] who we spoke to in June 2024.

Nanette McGuinness  00:33

I was going to ask you how having your feet in two worlds informs your music. And can you talk a little bit more about that and explain also what you mean about coming from a gray place?

Devon Lee  00:48

Yeah, I'll start with kind of talking about being in an in between of two worlds. I guess I feel like I know a lot of children of immigrants, or even immigrants, especially Korean people that I've talked to who feel kind of bad because they don't have such a strong connection to their culture or like where they came from. For me, it's very direct. It's like I grew up there, but for some people, it's like way more distant. But then for me, it's I also have friends who are. You know, they speak Korean so much more fluently. They are up with the times. They've lived there for a lot longer. I honestly don't, I don't really think that. I think that to a Korean I'm just so aggressively American...

Nanette McGuinness  01:42

[laughs]

Devon Lee  01:42

...and to [laughs] an American, I think I'm just like a little bit Korean. You know, on one hand, it's been just amazing to be able to, like, experience both cultures. And I really love that. I feel like I'm in a really great place with that. But it also really just feel like I'm not. I don't really have strong ties to either. So it's been for me personally. This multiplies me personally and less musically. Just like, where do I fit when it comes to, like, where am I going to go? You know, how do I feel about my my family, you know, are already from the same country. Are they like foreigners to me now, kind of stuff like that. And musically, I'm kind of coming back to the sounds from where my childhood it was a lot of vigor lately. I really avoided it for a long time. Well, first because, you know, it's kind of weird to isolate music from certain cultures, and sometimes I fear that it might be like, Oh, it might be too gimmicky. I really don't want to make it seem like, Oh, look at me. I'm from a culture. But...

 Nanette McGuinness  02:53

[laughs]

Devon Lee  02:53

...I also don't want, by trying not to alienate it, I'm I was kind of purposefully like keeping it away, and...

Nanette McGuinness  03:04

mmhmm

Devon Lee  01:42

I don't know... I've been really having a lot of fun lately, trying to explore where the music from my past and the images from my past, like, I can, I can use the images from my present to bring that together. I've been listening to a lot of like, not really. I want to really get into more Korean traditional music Pansori like traditional music, but also just kind of like fun, but like, kind of like 80s. It's called, like, trot music. It's pretty much like, Oh, we're having fun...

Nanette McGuinness  03:13

[laughs] yeah yeah

Devon Lee  03:41

...and I've been incorporating that into stuff that I've been working on, but very, very slowly, it's still been tough to figure out where it lies.

Nanette McGuinness  03:55

So I had a couple of questions for you. One is an observation that it sounds like you're kind of twixt in between that... 

Devon Lee  04:04

yeah

Nanette McGuinness  04:05

...struggling with the notion of assimilation versus embracing versus rejecting, and what to kind of include in the larger definition of what makes you you and you actually, I think will really enjoy our next two seasons, because we have a two year

Devon Lee  04:22

Oh?

Nanette McGuinness  04:22

Yeah, yeah wait, we have a two year commissioning initiative that we're calling "Women Crossing/ Liminality" and it's about, in the first year the Commission's project is Women in Transit, and it's about the effect of immigration and identity on women.

Devon Lee  04:40

Oh, that's beautiful.

Nanette McGuinness  04:41

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So it's exactly what, what you're talking about, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I'd like you to circle back and talk a little bit about, and I'm not sure if I'm going to get this word right, Pansori, the traditional Korean music?

Devon Lee  04:55

Yeah, yeah, well God, I... it's something that I have such a strong, like have so so many strong emotions towards I love it very much. But I want to admit right away, I am the farthest thing from an expert that could ever exist.

Nanette McGuinness  05:11

[laughs]

Devon Lee  05:12

I... I'm just enjoying it from the outside. I... there's so much that, there's so much intricacy and like the history, the performance, the repertoire, that I have no idea. I just, I think my entire exposure to it was as a kid, sometimes hearing it, you know, at school, um, when we're learning about culture or doing, like a festival or something, and but mostly for the past couple of years, finding it on YouTube, and just...

Nanette McGuinness  05:40

Oh yeah, yeah.

Devon Lee  05:42

...hearing it. I think something that I find so interesting about it is that my I just feel so drawn to it in a way that feels mostly subconscious, because I so I have known so much, I feel little about it, but I still get... I feel so stirred whenever I hear it, I get excited. I get interested.

Nanette McGuinness  05:46

It speaks to you.

Devon Lee  05:52

Yeah, and I'm coming at it mostly from the perspective of an outsider...

Nanette McGuinness  05:57

mmhmm

Devon Lee  05:57

...and while I feel like in the past, that might make me feel kind of guilty about how much I know about my own culture, right now it just makes me excited. It's like it makes me actually really excited to know that if I can look into this, then people all around the world can learn about this too. Yeah, it's just something that I know it's a little about, but I'd really love to learn more about.

Nanette McGuinness  06:36

I understand. So you aren't comfortable giving us a textbook definition of it. It's more that you're, you're drawn to it that you could...

Devon Lee  06:48

I could give you, um, some definitions that I've gathered, but with, like...

Nanette McGuinness  06:53

With asterisks?

Devon Lee  06:53

...a number of little asterisks.

Nanette McGuinness  06:54

[laughs]

Devon Lee  06:55

Yes, exactly. Pansori, I think the romanization of it is P, A, N, S, O, R, I.... "sori" in Korean means "sound" and Pansori  is a kind of traditional Korean music. It's kind of like a genre that's kind of theatrical. It involves very like steady percussion and a singer. I mostly heard just one singer performing a story, and the style is just like, really fascinating and enrapturing. But what's what's cool is that there's always like, different embellishments that remind me of, like Baroque music, yeah, where the the singer might use, like word painting, or the embellishments to decorate the words. And it's just something that really interests me.

Nanette McGuinness  07:50

That sounds fascinating. Thank you. Very interesting. So you're drawn to that? You're drawn to 80s, I guess I would say kind of sort of dance music as well.

Devon Lee  08:01

Yeah, in Korea. And I also wanted to talk a little bit about another place where I feel kind of like navigated being in between the world of more music performance and then composition also, like a more, I guess, a more traditional path, and then a more personal. It's word of path. One of my most influential mentors was John Deek, who I mentioned. He used to be the assistant principal basis of the New York Phil but during that time and long after he was also, he had, like, a flourishing career as a composer, and then he went on to create and found the very young composers program, which was where I first started composing. So he's someone who, throughout his career, has just made it to one of the, you know, the world's most prestigious orchestras, and had a career in that, and then, just like an exceptional performer, and also he has a big, sort of a lot of interesting music for bass and different ensembles. And just the fact that he somehow did it, both making new things and also playing older things, just really inspired me from the get go, and it's still been inspiring me, but it's been really weird, kind of trying to navigate those two areas at once. Yeah, you think that it would be pretty similar. It's like, oh, you play music, I write music. Well, we that overlaps hugely. But for me, at least it's felt just difficult to figure out how to utilize my time best. I don't want to sacrifice one for the other. That's going to be a big challenge for me going forward.

Nanette McGuinness  09:51

Yeah, there's the kinesthetic skill set of being good at an instrument, right? Versus, the intellectual, auditory skill set of writing music. They do overlap, but they're super different. And to become good at an instrument, one often ends up grinding away hours and hours and hours, which those hours don't feel like hours because one loves one's instrument. You know what I'm saying? The time melts away, and you're like, oh my god, did I just spend five hours playing around, you know, or whatever. Sometimes it can be a grind, but there is that love, but they are different, and they use time differently. So it makes perfect sense. So you're experiencing that struggle right now and aren't yet sure which love may pull you more on any given day.

Devon Lee  10:43

Yeah, yeah. I've really been trying to nurture both as best I can. But yeah, definitely been dealing with, like, worry that I might be lacking later field, but I just kind of try to stay focused on my main value, which is just like making making music and enjoying myself and working with people that I love, and I feel like I can do that with within both areas, and I can do my best.

Nanette McGuinness  11:10

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Devon Lee for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media, and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]