Year
2022
Instrumentation
Piano solo
Duration
ca. 9′
Commissioned by
Alberto Menjón, piano
Premiere
April 27, 2022
Greenfield Hall, Manhattan School of Music
Performances
February 9, 2023
Doctor of Music Graduation Recital
Auer Hall, Indiana University
Jacobs School of Music
Daeun Han, piano
OCTOBER 17, 2025
CFAMC Conference
Indiana Wesleyan University (Marion, IN)
Alexey Logunov, piano
Program Note
Adamantem (Latin): 변하지 않는 / adamantino
unshakable, invincible, determined, hard and eternal like a diamond
Between 2020 to early 2022 was the hardest time of my life. I felt lonely, overwhelmed, and scared. I could not tell why I was thrown into this darkness. I was afraid to confront the fast-changing environment surrounding me while I was losing my identity. I was afraid to see myself assimilating into this society. It was hard seeing myself trying too hard to be “one of them.”
I looked for something immutable, something that could keep me still. It was music: The music of the composers I love to listen to. In this piece, Adamantem, I used the musical languages – the chord progression, folk-like melodies, spatial registers and contrasts – from the composers Béla Bartók, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Strauss, and Johannes Brahms, who influenced me the most and gave me the courage to move forward.
