Eunsun Jung performs Eun Sook Baek’s Poverty to Liberty on this year’s Electro-acoustic Concert. The piece is composed for the gayageum, a string instrument from Baek’s homeland Korea. According to the composer, “the title Poverty to Liberty is used to describe the immigrants arriving on a foreign country, America. When the immigrants arrived at New York, their first encounter was the Statue of Liberty. As these people witness the Statue of Liberty, they start to imagine the American dream. In this piece, the Korean instrument ‘Gayageum’ represents the American land. East Asian Composers usually expressed their own culture and timbres through western instruments. However, for this piece, the western culture was expressed with an eastern instrument, and the immigrants (all ethnic group) with western instruments. This piece includes the sorrowful departure from the immigrants’ homeland, to achieve the American dream every other people aspire. It also includes their harsh journey across the sea, and the arrival to a land of hope.”
