Today we’re listening to Park Jiha, a Korean multi-instrumentalist and composer. She grew up singing in a choir, and that experience of music inspired her to learn instruments starting with the flute and later traditional instruments such as piri, yanggeum, and saenghwang. We’re first playing her new solo album, All Living Things, on which she draws out the sound of those traditional instruments, letting their waves reverberate over synth tones and echoes of the space itself. We’re also playing her score for the 2023 sci-fi thriller Foe, whose process influenced her work on All Living Things, as she tells us below. Foe also features compositions by cellist Oliver Coates and singer-songwriter Agnes Obel. A conversation with Park follows the streaming links.

All Living Things - Park Jiha (46m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal

Foe (OST) - Park Jiha, Oliver Coates & Agnes Obel (70m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Tidal

What's your earliest memory of music?

Maybe it was my mother's lullaby? She sang a lot of songs, and music was always playing in our house. So I naturally listened to a lot of music, and I think I got familiar with music unconsciously. After that, when I was young, I was in a choir while learning instruments little by little, and I think I really liked and felt the power of emotions that comes from the harmony of sound even as a child.

Tell us about the many instruments you've learned. We're curious specifically what motivated you each time to pick up a new instrument.

In fact, rather than intentionally trying to learn many different instruments, it just happened naturally. I first learned a little bit of the flute when I was very young, and later majored in Piri when I went to music school. During my college studies, there was a curriculum where Piri majors could learn the Saenghwang as a side track, so I got to learn the Saenghwang as well.

For the Yanggeum, I gradually learned it on my own because I wanted to add a different sound to my palette while creating my own music.

I was not interested in trying to master a lot of different instruments but rather in reaching the capacity to be able to have everything I needed sound wise to create what I had in mind, it was more a need than a goal.

You've spoken about how you learned traditional instruments and then tried to forget the traditional way of playing them. How did this happen and what influences encouraged you on this journey?

Playing traditional music could also be very meaningful for someone, but rather than simply repeating what has been passed down, I personally wanted to find my own music. I thought that would be more meaningful in my life, and it would also be a lot more fun to play. I wanted to make music that conveys emotions to people, makes them draw images, and makes them imagine. To do that, I need to draw something and tell a story while playing, but I felt that traditional music had its own limitations in conveying that depth to people, perhaps because I didn’t live in the era it was first conceived in. So I started making my own music little by little, and I’m still working on it steadily.

Film scores were an early inspiration for you. What movies / scores were your favorites then and now?

When I was young, I remember watching the French movie Manon of the Spring (Jean De Florette) and playing the music on the piano by myself and drawing my own picture sheet music. I don't remember the movie's content well now, but I think I should watch it again. I really liked Anne of Green Gables as a cartoon and book since I was young, and recently I really enjoyed watching the Anne of Green Gables series made in Canada on Netflix.

I think these had a lot of underlying emotions and messages about human relationships, I think they did influence me in some way on how to see things and express myself as a child, not only aurally but also through music.

On All Living Things you accompany traditional instruments with electronic ones, namely synths. What motivated this change to your sound and what equipment did you use? (We have many musician readers so feel free to go into detail.)

While working on the music for the movie Foe, I learned a lot about expanding my sound somehow quite unconsciously. But as I started feeling it while composing I wanted to include those elements in this album as well, and since I've so far worked a lot on finding new sounds using only traditional instruments, I wanted to actively use sounds other than instruments this time to expand the dynamic range of my music. There's nothing special about the equipment, mostly virtual synthesizer in my DAW looking for sounds that I felt would fit well with the composition I made and my instruments.

Which artists / pieces of music most influenced All Living Things?

I think the composition work I did for the film Foe had the biggest influence. It was my first time working on film music, and I never thought I would work on such a large-scale production from the beginning. Director Garth Davis told me he felt like hearing the sound of Earth in my music, and he wanted me to express it in some way. That story really resonated with me, and it made me think about a lot of things.

Also, my daily routines, the times I spent walking or doing yoga, letting go of myself and looking around, my whole environment had a big influence on this album.

How do you discover new music these days?

Actually, I don't think I'm the type of person who searches for and listens to music that much, I am more interested in creating.

What are you working on next?

As I just released the album a few weeks ago I haven't really thought about what's next, but I think the next thing is probably going to be preparation, getting the compositions ready for live performance to an audience.

In general I never really plan out much of the creation process, I live my life steadily, doing my daily things and when I feel like I get something in mind then that’s when it all starts again.