Danbi Um & JIJI

Violin and guitar traverse genres, from exquisite Baroque to Piazzolla's spirited tango.

23/24 Hop Presents

JIJI is an expansive artist on both acoustic and electric guitar, playing a range of music from traditional and contemporary classical music to free improvisation. Violinist Danbi Um captivates audiences with her virtuosity and interpretive sensitivity.

Together, the two young artists have forged a fruitful musical relationship and this eclectic concert illuminates their singular collaboration style. From Italian Baroque and the traditional Spanish song to American jazz and Piazzolla's spirited tango, the duo delivers an enchanting fusion of masterful performances.

Funded in part by the Aires Family Fund for the Performing Arts. Danbi Um photo: Marco Borggreve. Jiji photo: Marty Bra

Praised by The Strad as an "utterly dazzling" artist, with "a marvelous show of superb technique" and "mesmerizing grace" (New York Classical Review), violinist Danbi Um captivates audiences with her virtuosity, individual sound and interpretive sensitivity. A Menuhin International Violin Competition Silver Medalist, winner of the prestigious 2018 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant and a recent top prizewinner of the Naumburg International Violin Competition, she showcases her artistry in concertos, solo recitals and in collaboration with distinguished chamber musicians. In 2018, Ms. Um made her New York recital debut at Lincoln Center presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. After winning the 2014 Music Academy of the West Competition, Ms. Um made her concerto debut in the Walton Violin Concerto with the Festival Orchestra, conducted by Joshua Weilerstein. Born in 1990 in Seoul, South Korea, Ms. Um began violin lessons at the age of three. In the year 2000, she moved to the United States to study at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she earned a Bachelor's degree. She also holds an Artist Diploma from Indiana University. Ms. Um is a winner of Astral Artists' National Auditions. She plays a 1683 "ex-Petschek" Nicolo Amati violin, on loan from a private collection.

Praised by The Washington Post for her "mesmerizing" and "stirring" performances, JIJI is an adventurous guitarist known for her virtuosity and command of diverse repertoire. Equally at home with both acoustic and electric guitar, her concert programs range from traditional and contemporary classical to free improvisation. Through her impeccable musicianship, compelling stage presence and commitment to commissioning and performing new musical works, JIJI has solidified her reputation as a top 21st-century guitarist. In 2021, The Washington Post selected JIJI as "one of the 21 composers/performers who sound like tomorrow," and The Kansas City Star recently described her as "a graceful and nuanced player." Her performances have been featured on PBS (On Stage at Curtis), NPR's From the Top, WHYY-TV, FOX 4-TV, Munchies (the Vice Channel), The Not So Late Show (Channel 6, Kansas) and Hong Kong broadcast station RTHK's The Works. In 2016, she became the first guitarist in 30 years to secure first prize in the Concert Artists Guild Competition. A committed educator, Jiji joined the Arizona State University's School of Music, Dance and Theater faculty as Assistant Professor of Guitar in 2018. She is also a visiting artist and adjunct faculty member at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she began as Associate Professor of Music in Guitar in August 2023. She has presented master classes and workshops extensively, including at the Peabody Institute, Eastman School of Music, Yale University and Dublin's National Concert Hall, among many others. In addition to advocating for the music of her contemporaries, JIJI also performs and records many of her own works, and she continues to develop her distinctive compositional voice.

The Hop Presents

Danbi Um, violin and JIJI, guitar
Tuesday, January 9, 8 pm
Church of Christ at Dartmouth College • 2024

Funded in part by the Aires Family Fund for the Performing Arts

Program

Approximate duration: 90 minutes

Violin Sonata in D minor, Op. 5, No. 12, “La Folia” Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) arr. Ferdinand David (1810–1873)

“Misty” Erroll Garner (1921–1977)

Suite populaire Espagnole Manuel de Falla (1876–1946) arr. Paul Kochanski (1887–1934)
El paño moruno
Nana
Canción
Polo
Asturiana
Jota

Asturias (Leyenda), Op. 232, No. 1 Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909)

Caprice in A minor, Op. 1, No. 24 Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840)

Histoire du Tango Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992)
Bordel 1900
Café 1930
Nightclub 1960

Program Notes

Arcangelo Corelli
Violin Sonata in D minor, Op. 5, No. 12, “La Folia”

Composer and violinist Arcangelo Corelli was born in Fusignano, in the Papal States, on February 17, 1653, and died in Rome on January 8, 1713. He published his Op. 5 collection of 12 sonatas for violin and continuo in 1700. Noted Romantic-era violinist Ferdinand David arranged the piece with some modern touches for violin and piano (tonight performed on guitar).

In 1700, at the height of the Baroque period, Corelli was living well. He’d established his unparalleled fame and fortune solely through instrumental music and near-exclusively via commercial music publishers—firsts in European art music, which had all but required its composers to focus on vocal music for the church and court. And, through his music and teaching, he’d personally advanced violin technique and pedagogy.

For the final sonata (really, a theme and variations) of his Op. 5 collection, Corelli couched his cutting-edge violin writing within an ancient architecture. The folia, by 1700, was an internationally popular melody and chord progression that provided a looping ostinato framework for dignified sarabandes. But its roots predate our earliest sources. It first emerged as a late medieval folk dance in Portugal before arriving in 16th-century Spain as an art music formula; there, as well as in Italy, by the 17th century it was associated especially with the newly-developed Baroque guitar. In that antique frame, Corelli weaves a set of variations that certainly would have been embellished by unwritten ornaments—helpfully imagined and fleshed out in Ferdinand David’s arrangement.

Erroll Garner
“Misty”

Jazz pianist and composer Erroll Garner was born on June 15, 1921, in Pittsburgh, and died in Los Angeles on January 2, 1977. He composed his hit “Misty” in 1954 as an instrumental tune without lyrics. Its first recording was that year on the studio album Contrasts, performed by Garner’s trio: Garner on piano, Wyatt Ruther on the bass and Fats Heard on drums.

Erroll Garner was a singular voice in midcentury jazz, simultaneously an eccentric swing holdout and a maverick post-bopper in an age of bebop ubiquity. As a rule, he played solo or in a piano-bass-drums combo, allowing his idiosyncratic virtuosity to shine. Under his completely self-taught fingers—Garner never learned to read notation, either—the piano became an orchestra of a hundred voices in dynamic, ever-changing textures. While the left hand holds down that pounding Krupa-eque four-on-the-floor, the right rips the bar right up with proclamations so far behind the beat they’ve gotta squint to make it out—only to spring away a moment later into downright gymnastic arpeggios and delicate filigrees.

“Misty,” a sentimental ballad in 32-bar form, is Garner’s lasting contribution to the Great American Songbook. Rich as its realization on his original recording may be, those wistful repeated eighths guarantee the clarity of its bittersweet core.

Manuel de Falla
Suite populaire Espagnole

Manuel de Falla was born in Cádiz, Andalusia, Spain, on November 23, 1876; he died on November 14, 1946, in Alta Gracia, Argentina. He composed his Siete canciones populares españolas (Seven Spanish Folk Songs) as a suite for soprano and piano in 1914. In 1925, consulting with de Falla, the Polish violinist Paul Kochanski published his arrangement of six of the songs for violin and piano as the Suite populaire Espagnole, performed tonight on violin and guitar.

De Falla, in 1914, was an artist vindicated. The first years of his career were a frustrating tussle with Spain’s conservative musical institutions: his admiration of French music (especially that of Debussy) ticked off nationalist critics, while his aspirations to Italian-style opera and large-scale orchestral writing were hobbled by Spain’s modest zarzuela-dominated music scene. But in Paris, where he met Debussy, Ravel and fellow expat Albéniz, his long-delayed opera La vida breve was staged at last, his modernist style met with acclaim. Forced back to Madrid with the outbreak of the Great War, de Falla and his music finally found recognition at home.

The Siete canciones populares, completed in Paris, premiered in Madrid; today, they’re the most frequently performed of all Spanish-language art songs. Traditional tunes lay the foundation for de Falla’s signature harmonic treatment, which alternates the richness of seventh and ninth chords with spacious folkloresque modal atmospheres. Kochanski’s arrangement for violin and piano shows off both instruments equally and brilliantly.

Isaac Albéniz
Asturias (Leyenda), Op. 232, No. 1

Composer and pianist Isaac Albéniz was born in Camprodón, Catalonia, on May 29, 1860, and died in Cambo-les-Bains, France, on May 18, 1909. He wrote Asturias around 1898 as an additional movement of his 1886 Suite española for solo piano. Tonight the work is performed on solo guitar.

Listeners may be surprised that the composer of Asturias, among the best-loved works in the classical guitarist’s repertoire, never wrote a single piece for guitar. A contemporary of de Falla and a fellow mover and shaker in Spanish musical nationalism, Albéniz wrote near-exclusively for the piano. If de Falla’s realm was theater and song, Albéniz, an accomplished soloist and improviser, championed the keyboard. And where de Falla and others used folk tunes verbatim, Albéniz preferred suggestion, rather than quotation, of Spain’s vernacular traditions. But you’d be easily fooled by Asturias, especially when played (as it typically is today) on the guitar, whose idiomatic flamenco strums Albéniz imitated so effectively in the piano original. The form is a ternary ABA, surrounding a lyrical central section with furiously virtuosic material in E minor.

Nicolò Paganini
Caprice in A minor, Op. 1, No. 24

Violinist and composer Nicolò Paganini was born on October 27, 1782, in Genoa; he died in Nice on May 27, 1840. Around 1805, he composed his 24 Caprices: über-difficult etudes for unaccompanied violin, dedicated upon their publication to “alli Artisti.” Tonight the work is performed on solo guitar.

As the instrument’s most famous virtuoso, Paganini is best remembered as a violinist. Advancing violin technique (for example, through the punishing yet tuneful Op. 1 etudes) and epitomizing the Romantic cult of virtuosity, his larger-than-life persona drew flocks of admirers despite his rockstarish onstage antics. But Paganini was also an avid guitarist; in fact, a majority of his works feature the instrument—as the violin’s go-to accompanist and as a solo instrument in its own right. So, while this famous barn-burning A minor theme and variations was intended as an instructional high-wire act for solo violin, its popularity as a guitar showpiece is only fitting. Paganini, I think, would approve.

Astor Piazzolla
Histoire du Tango

Composer and bandoneonist Astor Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, on March 11, 1921; he died on July 5, 1992, in Buenos Aires. He wrote his Histoire du Tango suite for flute and guitar in 1985;
the composer’s own notes on each movement are provided below.

Bordello 1900: The tango originated in Buenos Aires in 1882. It was first played on the guitar and flute. Arrangements then came to include the piano, and later, the concertina. This music is full of grace and liveliness. It paints a picture of the good-natured chatter of the French, Italian and Spanish women who peopled those bordellos as they teased the policemen, thieves, sailors and riffraff who came to see them. This is a high-spirited tango.

Café 1930: This is another age of the tango. People stopped dancing it as they did in 1900, preferring instead simply to listen to it. It became more musical and more romantic. This tango has undergone total transformation: the movements are slower, with new and often melancholy harmonies. Tango orchestras came to consist of two violins, two concertinas,
a piano and a bass. The tango is sometimes sung
as well.

Nightclub 1960: This is a time of rapidly expanding international exchange, and the tango evolves again as Brazil and Argentina come together in Buenos Aires. The bossa nova and the new tango are moving to the same beat. Audiences rush to the nightclubs to listen earnestly to the new tango. This marks a revolution and a profound alteration in some of the original tango forms.

“Mesmerizing…stirring”
The Washington Post on JIJI

“utterly dazzling”
The Strad on Danbi Um

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