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Sunny Choi
Toronto, Ontario, Canada | Established. Jan 01, 2008 | SELF
Music
Press
[์ธํฐ๋ทฐ] ์จ๋ ์ต, โ์ฌ๋ํ๋คโ๊ณ ๋งํด์ฃผ๋ ์ ์จ
โCulture is Strong!โ
โ2013 ์ธ๊ณํ์ธ์ฐจ์ธ๋ ๋ํโ๊ฐ ํ์ฐฝ์ธ 10์4์ผ, ์์ธ ์์ปคํ ํธํ
์์ ๋ง๋ ์ ์ ํผ์๋์คํธ๋ ์ธํฐ๋ทฐ ๋ถํ์ ํ์พํ ์ํ๋ค. ์ง๋ 1999๋
์บ๋๋ค ํ ๋ก ํ ๋ก ์ด๋ฏผ์ ๊ฐ ๊ทธ๋
๋ ์ฐจ์ธ๋ ํ์ธ ๋ฆฌ๋ ์๊ฒฉ์ผ๋ก ์ด๋ฒ ๋ํ์ ์ฐธ๊ฐํ๋ค. ๊ฐ๋ง์ ๋ ์ธ์์ ์ธ ํผ์๋
ธ ์ฐ์ฃผ๋ก ๋ฐ์๊ฐ์ฑ๋ฅผ ๋ฐ์ ํผ์๋์คํธ ์จ๋ ์ต(ํ๊ตญ๋ช
์ต์ ๊ทผ, 26์ธ)์ ์์
๊ณผ ๊ฐ์กฑ์ ๋ํ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋๋ ๋ดค๋ค.
- 6๋
๋ง์ ํ๊ตญํ์ด๋ผ๋ฉด์์. ๊ฐํ๊ฐ ๋จ๋ค๋ฅด๊ฒ ์ด์.
โ๊ฐ ์ ์ ํ ์ฐจ์ธ๋ ์ง์๋ฆฌ๋๋ก ์ธ๊ณ์ง์ํฌ๋ผ์ ์ฐธ๊ฐํ ๊ฒ 2007๋
์ด๋๊น, ํ์๋ก 7๋
๋ง์ด์์. ์ค๋๋ง์ ์ฐพ์ ๋ชจ๊ตญ์ธ๋ฐ, ๋๋ฌด ๋ง์ด ๋ณํด์ ๊น์ง ๋๋์ด์.โ
- ๊ฐ์ฅ ํฐ ๋ณํ๊ฐ ๋ญ์์ด์?
โํ๊ตญ์ ํ๋ฃจ๊ฐ ๋ค๋ฅด๊ฒ ๋น ๋ฅด๊ฒ ๋ณํํ๋, ์ผ์ข
์ โ์งํโํ๋ ๋๋์ด๋๊น. ํ๊ตญ ์ฌ๋๋ค์ด ์ด๋ ๋ถ์ผ๋ ์ง ์ด์ฌํ ํ๊ธฐ ๋๋ฌธ์ด ์๋๊น์? ํ๊ตญ์ ๋นํ๋ฉด ํ ๋ก ํ ๋ ๋ง์น ๋ฉ์ถฐ์๋ ๊ฒ์ฒ๋ผ ๋๊ปด์ง ๋๊ฐ ์์ด์.โ
- ์ฌ์ค ์ธํฐ๋ทฐ๋ฅผ ์ค๋นํ๋ฉด์ ๋จ๋ค๋ฅธ ์ด๋ ฅ์ ํฅ๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ์๊ฒผ์ด์. ์๋ช
๊ณผํ์ ์ ๊ณตํ๋๋ฐ, ์ง๊ธ์ ํผ์๋์คํธ๋ก ํ๋ํ๊ณ ์์์์.
โ์กธ์
ํ โ๋
ธ์ธ์ํโ์ผ๋ก ์ง๋ก๋ฅผ ์ ํ๋ ค๊ณ ํ์ด์. ํผ์๋
ธ๋ โ๋ฐฉ๊ณผ ํ ํ๋โ์ผ๋ก 4์ด ๋๋ถํฐ ์ณค์์ฃ . ๋ํ๊ต 3ํ๋
๋ ์ง๋ก๋ฅผ ์ฌ๊ฐํ๊ฒ ๊ณ ๋ฏผํ๋ฉด์ ์์
์ ์์ ๋์ผ๋ฉด ์ด๋๋ก ์์ ๋๋๋ฒ๋ฆด ๊ฒ ๊ฐ์์ด์. ๋๊ณ ๋๊ณ ํํํ ๊ฒ ๊ฐ์์ ๊ณ ์ฌ ๋์ ๊ฒฐ๊ตญ ์ ์ ํ์ โ์์
โ์ด์์ฃ .โ
- ์๋ก์, ๋ณ์ ๋ฑ์์ ๊ณต์ฐ์ 8๋ฐฑ ์ฌ ์ฐจ๋ก๋ ํ์๋ค๋ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋ฃ๊ณ โ๋ญ๊ฐ ์ฆ๋ช
ํ๋ ค ์๊ฐํ์ ์ด ๊ฒ ์๋๊ฐโ๋ผ๋ ๋๋์ ๋ฐ์์ด์.
โ์ฌ์ง ์๊ณ ์ฐ์ฃผํ๊ณ ๋ ์ฐ์ฃผํ์ด์. ์์
์ ํ๊ฒ ๋ค๊ณ ๋ง์ ๋ฐ์ด๋ค๊ธด ํ์ง๋ง, ์ฌ์ค ์ ์ค์ค๋ก๋ ํ์ ์ ํ ์ ์์์ฃ . ์ฃผ๋ณ ์ฌ๋๋ค์ ์์ ๋ ๋ถ๋ด๋์๊ณ . ๋๋ง์ ๊ฒ์ ์ฐพ๊ณ ์ถ๋ค๋ ์๊ฐ๋ฟ์ด์์ด์. โ๋ํ์ ๋๊ฐ ์์ ๋ฐ๊ณ , ์ ํด์ง ์ฐ์ฃผ๋ฅผ ๋ฐ๋ณตํด์ ํ๋ ๊ฒ ๋ฌด์จ ์๋ฏธ๊ฐ ์์๊นโ ์ด๋ฐ ์๊ฐ๋ค๋ก ๋ต๋ตํ์์ด์.โ
- ์ฐ์ฃผ์๋ก์ ์ด๋ค ๋ํ๊ตฌ๊ฐ ํ์ํ๋ ๊ฑฐ๋ค์?
โ๋น์ทํด์. ์ฌ์ค ์์
์ ํ๊ณ ์ถ์๋ ๊ฐ์ฅ ํฐ ์ด์ ๋ ๋จ๋ค์ด ๋ด ์์
์ ๋ฃ๊ณ ๊ฐ๋์ ๋ฐ๋ ๋ชจ์ต์ ๋ณด๊ณ ์ถ์๊ฑฐ๋ ์. ๊ณต๊ฐํ ์ ์๋ โ์ ๋ง์ ์์
โ์ ํตํด์ ๋ง์ด์์.โ
- ๊ทธ๋์ ์๊ณก์ ์์ํ ๊ฑฐ๊ตฐ์.
โ์๊ณก์ ์ฌ์ค ์๋
๋ถํฐ ์์ํ์ง๋ง, ๊ณก์ ์ธ ๋๋งํผ์ โ์ด๋ช
์ ์ธ ์ฌ๋โ๊ณผ ์กฐ์ฐํ ๋๋์ด๋๊น. ๋ฌผ๋ก ์ฒ์ ์๊ณก์ ์์ํ ๋๋ โ๋ต์ด ์ ๋์ค๋โ ์ํฉ์ด์์ด์. ์ ๋ง์์ด ๊น๋ค์ง ์์ ๊ณก์ ์ฐ๊ณ ์ถ์ง ์์์ ํ์ญ์ ๋๋จํ ํฌ๊ฒ ์์ ์
์ด์ฃ .โ
- ์ฌ๋ผํ๋ ์ด๋ป๊ฒ ๊ทน๋ณตํ์ด์?
โ๊ฐ์กฑ, ์น๊ตฌ์์ ์ธ๊ฐ๊ด๊ณ๋ฅผ ๋ค์ ์์ํ๋ฉด์ ๋ง์๋ ์์ ๋๊ณ ๊ณก๋ ์์ํ ๋์ค๊ธฐ ์์ํ์ด์. โ๊น์ด ์๊ณ ๊ณต๊ฐํ ์ ์๋ ์ ๋ง์ ๊ณกโ์ ์์ง ํ์ฌ ์งํํ์ธ ์
์ด์ง๋ง์.โ
- โ์์
์ ์๊ฐ์ด ์ฌ๋์๊ฒ์ ๋น๋กฏ๋๋ค.โ ํฅ๋ฏธ๋ก์ด๋ฐ์.
โํผ์๋์คํธ๋ก ํ๋ํ๊ธฐ ์์ํ ๋ ์ฃผ๋ณ ์ฌ๋๋ค๊ณผ ์ฐ๋ฝ์ ๋๋ค์ํผ ํ์ด์. ์ฐ์ฃผ์๋ง ๋ชฐ๋ํ์๋ ์๋ฏธ๋ ์์๊ณ , ์ฃผ๋ณ์ ์ฐ๋ ค ์์ธ ์์ ๋ ๋ถํธํ์ด์. ์ฐ์ฃผ๋ฅผ ํตํด ์ด๋ค์ ์ฐ๋ ค๋ฅผ ๋ถ์์์ผ๋ณด์๋ ์๊ตฌ๊ฐ ์ปธ๊ณ ์. โ๊ด๊ณโ์ ๋ํ ์ ์๊ฐ์ ๋ค์ ์ ๋ฆฝํ๋ฉด์ ์์
์ด ํ๋ฆฐ ์ด์ ๋ ๋ฌด์๋ณด๋ค ์ ์์
์ด โ์ฌ๋โ์ ํฅํด ์๊ธฐ ๋๋ฌธ์ด์์.โ
- โ๊ณต๊ฐํ ์ ์๋ ์์
โ์ด๋ ์ด๋ค ์์
์ผ๊น์?
โ์๋น ์๊ฒ โ๊ณ ๋ง๋ค, ๋ฏธ์ํ๋ค, ์ฌ๋ํ๋คโ๋ ๋ง์ ์ ๋ชปํด์. ๋๋ฌด ๋จ์ํ ๋ง ํ ๋ง๋์ธ๋ฐ, ๊ทธ๊ฒ ์ฝ์ง๊ฐ ์์์ด์. ์ด๋ ธ์ ๋๋ถํฐ ์ธ๊ตญ ์ํ์ ํ๊ธด ํ์ง๋ง, ์ด๊ฐ์ด ๋ง์ ๋ชปํ๋ ํ๊ตญ ์ฌ๋์ ํผ๊ฐ ํ๋ฅด๋๊น์(์์). ๊ณต๊ฐํ ์ ์๋ ์์
์ด๋ ์ด๋ฐ ๊ฒ ๊ฐ์์. ๋ง๋ก๋ ๋ชปํ์ง๋ง, ์์
์ผ๋ก ๊ทธ ๊ฐ์ ์ ์ ํ ์ ์๋ ๊ทธ๋ฐ.โ
๊ทธ๋
๋ ์์ ์ ์๋ฐ โCloserโ์ ์๋ก๋ โUnspoken loveโ์ด ์๋ฒ์ง๋ฅผ ํฅํ ๋ง์์ ํํํ๊ณ ์๋ค๊ณ ์ค๋ช
ํ๋ค. ์ต์ ๊ทผ ์จ์ ๋์ ์ด๋ด ๋ถ๊ฒ ์ถฉํ ๋๋ค.
- ์ฐจ์ธ๋ ๋ํ ์๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ํด๋ณผ๊ฒ์. ๋ฉ์ง ์ฐจ์ธ๋ ๋จ์ฑ๋ค ๋ง์ด ๋ง๋ฌ์ด์?
โ๊ธ์์(์์). ๋ค์ํ ๋๋ผ์์ ์จ ์ฌ๋ฌ ๋ถ์ผ์ ์ ๋ฌธ๊ฐ๋ค๊ณผ ๋ง๋๋ ์ผ์ ์ฆ๊ฒ๊ณ ํฅ๋ถ๋๋ ์ผ์ด์ฃ . ์ฐธ๊ฐํ ์ฐจ์ธ๋ ๋ชจ๋ ๋ณธ์ธ์ด ์ํด์ ์ด๊ณณ์ ์จ ๊ฑฐ์์์. ์์ฌ์ํต์ด ์ ๋๋๋ผ๋ ๊ณตํต๋ถ๋ชจ๋ ์ญ์ โํ๊ตญโ. ํด์ธ ์ํ์ ํ๋ฉด ์ ๊ตญ์๊ฐ ๋๋ค๋ ๋ง์ด ์ ๋ง ๋ง๋ ๊ฒ ๊ฐ์์. ํ๊ตญ์ธ์ด๋ผ์ ์๋์ค๋ฝ๋ค๋ ๊ฐ์ ์ ์ด๊ณณ์์ ์์ผ ํ์ธํ๊ฒ ๋์ด์.
- ์์ผ๋ก ์ด๋ค โํ๊ตญ์ธโ์ด ๋๊ณ ์ถ์ผ์ธ์?
โ์ฐ์ฃผํ๋ ์ด๋ฐ ๋ํ๋ฟ๋ง ์๋๋ผ, ํ์ด์ค๋ถ๊ณผ ์ ํ๋ธ๋ฅผ ํตํด์๋ ๋ง์ ์ฌ๋๊ณผ ์ํตํ๊ณ ์์ด์. ์ด๋ฐ ์ํต์ ์ ๊ฐ ํผ์๋์คํธ๋ก ํ๋ํ๋ฉด์ ๋ค์ํ ๋ถ์ผ์ ์ผ์ ํ๊ณ ์ถ๊ธฐ ๋๋ฌธ์ด์ฃ . ์ ๊ฐ ์ด๋ค โํ๊ตญ์ธโ์ด ๋ ์ง๋ ์์ง ์ ์ ์์ด์. ๋ค๋ง, ์ธ๊ตญ๊ณผ ํ๊ตญ์ ๋ฌธํ๋ฅผ ์ดํดํ๊ณ ์ ์ ์ ์ฐพ์ ์ ์๋ ์ฌ๋์ด ๋๊ณ ์ถ์ด์.โ - World Korean Newspaper
I love music. I really do. Iโm constantly listening to it and I enjoy (and own) a wide variety of musical genres so, of course, Iโm always on the look for new artists or musicians to check out. Yeah, Iโve said this before but itโs true. ^^
So when I was contacted by Sunny Choi, a Korean-Canadian contemporary pianist, I was intrigued. While I tend to listen to alternative or hip hop most of the time, when Iโm writing I generally listen to instrumental music โ from jazz to New Orderโs Substance โ so I immediately clicked the link to her SoundCloud profile to check out her new album, โCloser.โ
Iโll be the first to admit that while I love music, I never studied music (other than the mandatory courses in middle school). Iโve never taken piano. But wow! I love Sunny Choiโs โCloserโ and couldnโt stop listening. It was good, enjoyable and for me, very relaxing โ the perfect writing music.
Who is Sunny Choi?
She is a contemporary pianist who was born in Busan, Korea and immigrated to Canada as a teenager. In researching her, I was super impressed by her presence on social media and the fact that she maintains her own accounts. Itโs always fun for fans to know they are chatting with โ or at least reading the words of โ musicians (or actors/authors/etc.) they like. Sunny is not only a pianist but also a composer whose music speaks to and about her emotions and feelings. I love the line from her website โWe feel music. Not just hear music.โ because it reflects my philosophy as a listener. Want to know more about Sunny Choi? Check back on July 25th as we have an interview with her coming up.
Why did I like โCloserโ
Instrumental music for me, as a music lover but one with little technical knowledge of the music itself, is all about the way it makes me feel. And listening to โCloserโ put me in my happy place, the place where the words flow freely and ideas keep popping into my head. Itโs beautiful to listen to and because it is, itโs inspiring. For me at least, thatโs the best of what any music can offer you โ it can touch your creative soul, and make YOU want to create something.
I have listened to the album several times โ I never write about any music without listening to it at least 3 times but in this case, itโs been many more โ and my enjoyment of the music hasnโt lessened. Itโs still beautiful, still relaxing, still inspiring.
While I loved the entire album, I particularly liked the songs Unspoken Love, Sunday Brunch and Away. I think if I had to pick a favourite, it would be Sunday Brunch โ it just makes me smile to listen to it.
Do you need some new music to study to? Something to listen to while you write or paint? Then I would recommend checking out Sunny Choiโs โCloserโ.
Just the facts:
Who: Sunny Choi
What: Korean-Canadian contemporary pianist
New album: โCloserโ
Buy on iTunes: Closer โ Sunny Choi
Genre: Contemporary solo piano
Her influences: Classical music and pop
Social Media
Website
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
SoundCloud
**The entire album is composed and performed by Sunny Choi.**
Upcoming Concert!
But thatโs not all! She has an album release concert coming up next week. Iโm super excited about it. Why? Well, youโve heard about how I like the music but Iโll be honest, Iโm just as excited because of how Sunny Choi described the concert. Sheโs going to be talking to the crowd in between the songs about her music and culture. And since you all know how I like Korean cultureโฆ how could I not want to go? While different from my usual concert experiences, I think itโs going to be a fun, enjoyable and thoroughly interesting evening with some fab music.
One of the reasons I love attending film festivals is because of the chance to hear about the films from the director. To get that little peek into their mind and their creative process. So having the chance to do the same with a musician? Fabulous! How can one resist the opportunity to know the emotions and inspiration behind the music?
Have I hooked you on the concert yet?
When: Tuesday July 9th at 7:00 pm
Where: Musideum (401 Richmond Street West, Suite 133, Toronto)
How much: Theyโre only$15.
Tickets: Donโt worry, you can buy tickets here!
And Iโll leave you with a quote about her new album, โCloserโ. It โis inspired by my personal life journey, specifically feelings and emotions from my past that were not yet freely expressed or held back from my family and friends.โ How can you not want to listen to it after than?! - ATK Magazine
Contemporary Pianist Sunny Choi: Using Music as Therapy - Korean Newsweek (Montreal Korean Newspaper)
Sunny Choi is first and foremost a storyteller. With her piano as her voice and the world as her stage, thanks to the help of social media, this sparkling performer from Toronto is a beautiful example of chasing your dream and creating a life that you love. Here we talk about the power of emotions, pop music covers, and the importance of relationships โ I think youโll find this one particularly inspirational.
Who are you and what do you do?
Iโm a contemporary piano artist, creating and performing music that everyone can not only listen to but relate to regardless of their age, gender or cultural background. No prior knowledge in classical music is necessary at all to enjoy my piano music.
Tell us about your career in music and how you got started.
While studying Life Sciences in university, I felt the increasing need to do something about the music side of me that I couldnโt let go of. Iโve been playing the piano since I was 4 years old, and I felt that there was so much more that I could do with piano beyond just taking classical piano lessons. I sought out events in my city where piano music was needed, and gradually built my name as a performer and to spread my music. I also uploaded videos on YouTube covering todayโs popular music into my unique versions of these songs into piano music, to share my music with the rest of the world.
What do you look to for inspiration?
My inspiration for music comes from stories from different peopleโs lives. โCloserโ, my solo piano album is completely based on stories from my personal life journey, specifically feelings and emotions that had not yet been fully shared or expressed with family and friends. These feelings are something that everyone can relate with in some ways as we are all humans. Iโve spoken with many people of all ages and learned invaluable lessons about importance of finding happiness, that primarily comes from maintaining balanced relationships with family and friends.
How have you built up your fan base and online presence?
The initial online presence began with my artistic piano interpretations of todayโs popular music on my YouTube channel. Facebook also became an important platform where I started sharing my personal stories, thoughts and photos that have played roles in making my album possible.
Are there any particular challenges that youโve faced along the way that you could share with us?
Based on my personal challenge I had to overcome not so long ago, I remind myself to be cautious when exciting opportunities arise to work with others. Before evaluating the value of someoneโs work, itโs just as important or more to find out what kind of people they are. In the end, we work with people, not things.
How about any special achievements or favourite moments?
Although it only took a month to record my entire album โCloserโ, it took several years just to realize and learn the significance behind maintaining a balanced life. The day I had my album launch concert and got to share my stories and music felt like I was able to fully exhale for the very first time in my life. Before my album can be called a collection of my original compositions, it is a collection of stories inspired and influenced me that were put together to actually making my album possible.
What tools do you use to manage your online presence?
Online social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube play significant roles when it comes to sharing my music and stories. With just a few clicks, it allows me to be able to communicate with people from all over the world. While I was seeking a platform to can sell my piano scores for music from my album โCloserโ, I came across Selz that offers incredibly east, fast and modern- looking platform that I feel great about utilizing to sell my music.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Every day is a unique day for me. There are many different activities, ongoing projects and future opportunities that all require lots of work and researching in order for me to ultimately execute another project. As an independent artist, dealing with music and every aspect behind the music at the same time definitely is a handful, nevertheless I feel very much privileged to be doing what truly makes me happy everyday.
What has been the biggest surprise youโve had along the way?
Despite the number of videos of my performances that are widely spread out on YouTube, I havenโt said a word yet in any of these video clips, simply because I felt that the sound from my music already expresses everything I would and could verbally express. My biggest surprise has been consistently receiving messages from people from all over the world, on a daily basis, sharing their personal stories and struggles after they had heard my music. Google Translator comes in handy whenever I have to translate many of these messages into English, but Iโm incredibly thankful that my music is capable of connecting with peopleโs hearts. I do plan on speaking in one of my videos very soon.
What would you say to other aspiring musicians and creatives who are thinking about taking a similar path?
Whatever interests you in life, never take it for granted and do something about it.
When thereโs something that you particularly enjoy doing, grow that passion by seeking out opportunities where you can further explore and grow that interest. Growing up, the thought of living a life as a performing artist had never entered my mind, but active involvement in my community through music, without a doubt contributed towards crafting my musical skills as well as building my sociable personality. To find out what the future holds for you beyond a specific occupational title, seek what you love, not what you can do.
What does the future hold for you?
I feel that I have a duty to fulfill to make our world a better to place to live in. Through my music, I communicate my thoughts and emotions that others can not only hear, but feel, to inspire them to become closer to the ones that love. This year with my new album, I hope to do a concert tour in many different countries. I have a lot to say through my music, and I just canโt wait to share it with the rest of the world.
If you want to find out more about Sunny, head on over to www.sunnychoimusicworld.com or her Facebook page. - Selz
Contemporary piano artist Sunny Choiโs concerts arenโt your typical classical performances. โWhen you go to a [typical] piano concert, thereโs a pianist and thereโs a crowd, and you listen to them and when itโs done, you clap,โ says Choi. โItโs a very intimidating environment and I never really enjoyed it.โ
Choiโs concerts feel like a therapy session in which the audience is encouraged to tap into their emotions and share their stories. She engages the audience, narrating the personal stories behind each piece of music before performing it. โMy music is my therapy in life,โ says the 26-year-old, whose raw, lyrical style stirs emotions in her audience. โThe reaction from the crowd is pretty magical.โ
Choi began playing piano in her hometown of Busan, South Korea, when she was four years old, but never imagined she would turn it into a career. When she arrived in Canada at 13 years of age, Choi studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and was always looking for opportunities to play โ at churches, ballet studios and in school. โMusic was always a big part of my life,โ she says.
When it came time to go to university, Choi chose not to study music and instead pursued a career in life sciences with the hope of becoming a geriatrician. But, during her third year of studies, she had a breakdown. โI felt for some reason that if I let go of music I would have regrets for the rest of my life,โ she says. She abandoned her goal of becoming a geriatrician and, in 2008, began pursuing classical music as a career. She looked for corporate events and weddings that required piano accompaniment and, keeping up with her interest in geriatric care, began performing at nursing homes. (To date, Choi has visited more than 200 senior homes in Toronto, entertaining residents with her music.)
Her career switch caused a rift with her traditional parents, who couldnโt understand how she could abandon her studies to become a musician. โThey were very concerned,โ says Choi. While to her parents (her mom is a teacher and her dad an engineer), music was simply a hobby, Choi saw it as an opportunity for personal growth and a chance to use her musical talent to express long dormant feelings. Growing up in a Korean household where expression of emotion was frowned upon meant Choi had suppressed many feelings that became more difficult to contain as she grew into adulthood.
Her first album, Closer, was released in May 2013 and contains nine original songs, each track tied to a specific memory that stirs up sentiments Choi says had been trapped inside her. She holds nothing back now and spills out all of her emotions, good and bad, over the table weโre sharing in a Toronto cafรฉ.
The albumโs first track, called โCloser,โ is a piece Choi wrote to reflect her desire to form a stronger bond with her mother. โWhen people look at [my mom and me], we seem extremely close, but thereโs an emotional connection thatโs not quite there,โ explains Choi. As Choi became more influenced by Canadian culture, she noticed a difference in how emotions were communicated inside and outside her home.
โIn Korean culture, if you feel something, thatโs good enough,โ she says. โI was taught [by my parents] that crying in front of others or showing your emotions is something weak and you donโt do that.โ Growing up as a teenager in multicultural Toronto exposed Choi to many different ways of expressing emotion, causing her to call into question her parentsโ Korean ideas.
The second track called โUnspoken Loveโ is soft and poetic, yet, like all of her songs, impassioned; it portrays the struggle between Choiโs need to hear the words โI love youโ from her father and his inability to speak them. As a teenager in Canada, Choi was shocked to hear friends say โI love youโ to each other with ease. Such powerful words were not even spoken among the people that were most important to her. Although she always knew her father loved her, she suddenly felt the need to have that love verbalized.
Choi tears up as she talks about a family friend from Korea whose father passed away. While his son was giving the eulogy, he said his biggest regret was that he never told his father that he loved him. โHe finished the eulogy saying โI love you dad.โ โThat could have easily been me and my dad,โ says Choi emotionally.
Although sensing her parentsโ confusion and discomfort with her new open display of emotions, something very foreign to them, Choi felt the need to explore these feelings, playing them out through her music. โ[My parents] hadnโt changed, but I was feeling all these things being influenced by growing up here,โ she says. Through the making of the album, Choiโs relationship with her parents has improved and although they still struggle to express their emotions, Choi feels theyโre able to connect with her music. โMy dad now tells me he loves me,โ she smiles.
Tapping into long-suppressed emotions was an arduous process for Choi. Although the album only took one month to record, it was about two years in the making. Throughout the process, Choi kept journals of her thoughts and memories from childhood. โSometimes it just goes on for pages,โ she laughs. โWriting the music was the hardest thing [emotionally], but now that the albumโs out, the real work begins.โ
When I meet her, Choi is fresh off the bus from Montreal; a city sheโs become enamored with because of its rich arts history. Since the albumโs release sheโs been performing at various venues in Toronto and Montreal, sharing her raw, emotional music with anyone who will listen. Her Facebook page, where she posts her songs and videos, has more than 100,000 likes from individuals in more than 40 countries, many of whom are Koreans living abroad who connect with her stories and music and share in the same struggles sheโs had. โI get messages every day from people who listen to my music and talk about the struggles in their lives. Some of these stories are so personal I feel I donโt deserve to read their messages,โ she says.
Choi credits the creation of her album with living in Canada. โIf I only lived in Korea, this album wouldnโt have been possible. I think I would just accept things for the way it was,โ says Choi, who has also charted in Billboard magazine under its โNext Big Soundโ chart. Being in Canada, surrounded by other cultures challenged her perceptions and taught her how to express her feelings without shame.
Thanks to her album, Choi finally feels sheโs struck a balance between Canadian and Korean culture. โI very much appreciate the fact that I have a culture, [but] at the same time, I can learn from other cultures and fuse that into what I grew up with,โ she says. While her music is tied to stories about her own personal journey, she hopes other immigrants, in particular those who have faced similar challenges living between two cultures, can connect with her music.
โIf Iโm able to capture those emotions and put them into music and people feel that, Iโve done my job.โ - Canadian Immigrant Magazine
Discography
Closer (2013)- Original Solo Piano Album entirely composed by Sunny Choi
Track listings:
1. Closer
2. Unspoken Love
3. Sunday Brunch
4. Hug
5. Communication
6. Away
7. Protected
8. Reflection
9. This is Love
Photos
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Bio
Prior to releasing her first solo piano album 'Closer' in May 2013, contemporary piano artist and composer Sunny Choi had already charted in the Billboard magazine under 'Next Big Sound' chart, which lists the fastest accelerating artists across all major social music sites, statistically predicted to achieve future success.
Chois concerts feel like a therapy session in which the audience is encouraged to tap into their emotions and share their stories. She engages the audience, narrating the personal stories behind each piece of music before performing it. Sunny's true inspiration for writing her own music comes from maintaining healthy relationships with her family and friends by being open and honest with her feelings without any held back emotions.
Rather than considering making music as her career, Sunny views it as a precious vehicle that she utilizes to express her feelings and emotions and inspire others to contribute towards bringing positive changes in our world. Sunnys social media was initially built to simply share her music across the Internet, however it is also increasingly becoming a platform where Sunny shares her thoughts and feelings that serves to develop deeper personal connections with her music followers from all over the world.
Band Members
Links