Meet the Institute composers: Daniel J. Choi

Daniel J. Choi is one of the four composers of the inaugural NJSO Edward T. Cone Composition Institute. Throughout his life, he has found inspiration in great musical works—from cartoons to Berlioz—and found a way to incorporate those ideas into music that is distinctly his own.

What inspired you to start composing?

I’ve really been composing [my whole life]—I don’t remember when I wasn’t. I wrote my first official piece when I was 8 years old. Like any other kid, I was doodling on the piano, and I came up with a melody and a harmony, so there you go!

I actually think I started composing because of watching cartoons when I was young. I really liked the music [of cartoon soundtracks]. So, kind of like amateur-style ear training, I would try to figure out the cartoon melody on the piano and then reharmonize it, try to make it my own. That my way of starting to compose. Then, I thought, what if I had my own melody to start with? So I started to slowly tune that craft. It’s been a very gradual process.

When did you start formal composition studies?

I knew for a long time that I wanted to go into music, but I didn’t tell my parents! It was kind of the classic story. So in my senior year of high school, when my parents finally realized I wasn’t going to go into engineering, they said, okay, you might need some lessons. The arranger for my marching band also gave amateur composing lessons, so I met with him, and he got me into the idea of new perspectives, of taking criticism, and that really helped me to start [approaching composition] like a serious craft.

What appealed to you about the NJSO Edward T. Cone Composition Institute?

I really liked what the Institute offered—a lot of programs are a reading session, and that’s it; or a performance, and that’s it; or a workshop, and that’s it. It’s never really all three of them together. So what appealed to me about [the Cone Institute] was that it offers a lot of exposure to [aspects of] the music business that most programs don’t. To get a performance by [a professional orchestra], to work with Steve Mackey on the composing side and to also have masterclasses on the business side—sessions about publishing and editing, even public speaking, radio interviews—it’s a great all-around experience.

What was your inspiration for Scaena Ager, the work the NJSO will premiere through the Institute?

The inspiration for this was required—to apply for the Echoes of Fantastique competition with the Cleveland Orchestra and Frost Symphony Orchestra, your work had to have a connection to Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. To me, that was perfect, because it was what I’d been doing all my life—taking inspiration from someone else and trying to understand it, respect it then give it my own take, channel my own style.

I decided to take [Symphonie fantastique’s] middle movement, “Scenes from fields,” because of all the five movements, I didn’t know that one well. I did a score study of it, took Berlioz’s beginning and ending [ideas], put it into my own piece and created my own twist. Overall, it’s still my music, and that, to me, was a nice balance.

So I had a reading session of this piece already, and my teacher didn’t tell me he liked it a lot until after the performance (maybe he wanted to keep my ego in check!), but he came to me after and said he really liked it and really wanted me to hear it again in actual performance. So he’s been pushing me to apply to all these competitions, and this Institute was the perfect opportunity.

In the composer’s words

Scaena Ager (Latin—“scenes from fields”) was originally conceived through the Echoes of Fantasique, a reading session competition with members of the Cleveland Orchestra and the Frost Symphony Orchestra under the direction of James Feddeck. As such, I presented a work that exhibits my reactions towards Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.

I decided to incorporate quotations of Symphonie fantastique’s middle movement, “Scène aux champs,” not because of my infallible expertise of the musical selection but because I could hardly recite the main melody from memory. Score studying is a major focus in my post-secondary education, and I wanted to experience the particulars of Berlioz’s masterpiece that would captivate my attention. As a result, I drew parallels between the beginning and ending of both “Scène aux champs” and Scaena Ager. Specifically, my original work begins almost verbatim as the Berlioz counterpart, with his iconic English horn solo followed by the answer of the oboe. Everything but the pitches remains the same. Between the two solos are the “thunders” of the percussion instruments, an allusion to both Berlioz’s revolutionary timpani writing and the programmatic ending of the middle movement. The parallel works end with the sound of the French horn fading into silence. But, as influential as Symphonie fantastique is to Scaena Ager, the focus of the latter work relies on its own original elements.

Learn more about Choi and the other composers of the NJSO Edward T. Cone Composition Institute.