Chin Unsuk's "Rocana" Premieres in Montreal

Composer Chin Unsuk, 46, celebrated the world premiere of her new orchestral piece ``Rocana'' Monday in Montreal. She will also receive its U.S. premiere Saturday at New York's Carnegie Hall before its debut in other parts of the world.

Under the baton of conductor Kent Nagano, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra) performed ``Rocana'' as part of its ``Grand Concerto'' series alongside masterworks by Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky. The same group will give the New York premiere, and Nagano will helm ``Rocana's'' Chicago debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, April 24-29. The Asia premiere will take place in the near future with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, where Chin is composer-in-residence.

Meaning ``room of light'' in Sanskrit, ``Rocana'' reflects Chin's observation of ``the behavior of beams of light _ their distortion, reflections, and undulations.'' ``The overall picture and the overall structure are one entity, one `tonal sculpture.' However, one can look at it from various angles, since the inner structures are constantly changing. Even if the music at times gives the impression of stasis, subtle impulses, interactions and reactions are continually present,'' the composer wrote about her piece in a statement

``Rocana'' was jointly commissioned by the Seoul Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony, Bavarian State Opera and Beijing Music Festival Arts Foundation. This is the Seoul Philharmonic's first project with foreign partners and is expected to be a turning point for the domestic music scene, according to the orchestra.

This is Chin's latest premiere since her critically acclaimed opera ``Alice in Wonderland,'' which debuted last year at Munich's Bayerische Staatspoer (Bavarian State Opera). The modern opera was ranked in the ``Best of 2007'' list in the Los Angeles Times and was named ``World Premiere of the Year'' by European critics for Opernwelt magazine.

Born in Seoul, Chin is a trained pianist. She learned musical composition at Seoul National University before a German state scholarship took her to Hamburg, where she studied with the great Gyorgy Ligeti.

Chin has been praised for her ``formidable ear for sonority and for mining the expressive potential of the slightest nuances of pitch and pulse'' (The Guardian, United Kingdom). In 2004, her devilishly challenging Violin Concerto won her the prestigious Grawemeyer Award, the world's richest prize for composers. Proclaimed ``the first truly great work of this millennium'' by the Los Angeles Weekly, the concerto has been performed in more than 10 countries across Europe, Asia and North America.

Last fall, the composer led a series of creative premiere concerts with the Seoul Philharmonic titled ``Ars Nova.'' She also received the Composition Prize at the 2007 Daewon Music Awards, one of Korea's prime music events.

Chin currently lives in Berlin with her husband, pianist Maris Gothoni, and their young son.