Performing live on stage, sharing her music with an audience, is all the "magic dust" Somi Kim needs to elevate the music and take it to the next level. It makes the hours spent on her own in rehearsal rooms practising worth it.
"You learn so much about yourself and your colleagues when you’re on stage and especially with chamber music and the trio.
"It’s all about listening and reacting and responding to the different venues and audiences and - for me - a different piano anywhere I go.
"It’s rising up to that challenge and sort of embracing it, really."
So when the opportunity arose to perform with The New Zealand Trio in 2018, Kim, who was living in London at the time, took it. She had been performing all over Europe and the United Kingdom for seven years.
"I’d formed some pretty special relationships with instrumentalists and singers. And I really loved my life over there."
She had been planning on staying, but she had also heard violinist Amalia Hall was joining the trio’s founder, cellist Ashley Brown, about the same time.
"At that point in my career I guess I took a big risk and I took a chance.
"I just knew that I would regret not giving it a go ... Then I moved over and it was ... basically a dream job. "
The trio had gone on a really special journey together over the past couple of years since she officially joined in 2020, she said.
"I really think that our audiences can hear and feel it, too, when they come to our shows ... I guess we just really understand each other and we breathe together on stage.
"We’re great colleagues outside of work."
So the news that Brown planned to step down from the trio next year after 23 years with the group to explore other opportunities, spend time with his family and continue as principal cellist for Auckland Philharmonia mid next year meant changing times for the trio.
"We are really sad to see Ashley moving on from NZTrio, but we are excited for him and his future endeavours. Amalia and I are committed to taking NZTrio into the next exciting iteration while our search begins for a new permanent cellist to join our NZTrio whānau."
The group provided a rare opportunity to have a job they were passionate about and proud of.
"It holds a lot of honour and pride being part of a national group that’s so loved by everyone. I think that helps us to always strive for utmost excellence and encourages us to always be on top of our game and try and deliver intimate and exciting concerts."
That uniqueness has drawn her back to work after taking maternity leave to have her daughter Aria who is now 8 months old.
"It’s just been so wonderful to get back on stage sort of fulltime and ... share the magic of live performance with my colleagues and with our audiences."
She played a concerto with Orchestra Wellington in July but she was glad she took those first months off to be with her daughter.
She had also enjoyed being among colleagues again after finding those few months with a new baby quite isolating, despite the help from family and friends.
"I think that’s one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about going back to performing fulltime is just having that interaction, not only with the audiences, with the music, with my colleagues - I’ve just longed for that connection.
"I guess in a way, that’s why people go to concert. It’s for that special connection that you feel when you’re attending a concert that is hard to achieve looking at a live stream or listening to something on Spotify."
However, going back to work came with a lot of "mum guilt" in the beginning, especially when Aria started daycare earlier than a lot of children of Kim’s mum friends, who were taking a full year off.
"I would have people come up to me and be like ‘oh, that’s such a shame that you have to go back to work’. And then I just thought does it make make me a bad mum that I actually want to go back?’
"We love our daughter very much, but I also really love my job. And I really love playing the piano ... For us, it was the right decision to put her into care when she was 6 months, and she is absolutely thriving."
They were lucky to find home-based care with a great carer and three other children Aria loved playing with.
"Seeing how happy she is just sort of solidifies in our guts that this was the right decision for us."
She also decided not to take Aria on the tour with her.
"It takes an immense amount of focus and concentration and preparation. Because ... if she’s with me, I won’t be able to put my soul into performing on stage because I’ve got different priorities now."
However, with Aria being at home with her husband or family, she knew she was in good hands and she could concentrate on performing.
Now back in the swing of things, Kim was enjoying touring with the trio.
It is a big tour for the group with 13 dates across the country and a "special" programme including the "absolutely exquisite pianistic writing" of Fanny Mendelssohn’s (sister of Felix) Trio in D minor, Joan Tower’s Trio Cavany, a new commission by New Zealand composer Eva Bedggood and British composer Ethel Smyth’s piano trio.
"It’s not often that we have so many concerts of the same programme. And so I think it’s really special for both us and the audiences that we are on a musical journey and no one concert is the same.
"Just seeing how the pieces evolve every concert has been a really special experience and feels like a great way to wrap up the rest of our concert season."
One of the strengths of the trio had been its championing of New Zealand music, although she admitted before joining she was a bit "snobbish" about contemporary music.
The trio changed her perception.
"It’s like music of right now ... If we don’t play it, then who’s going to?
"I believe ... to this date, there has never been a single programme or concert that we’ve given where we haven’t featured a New Zealand work.
And I think that’s something to be really proud of."
It highlighted how a career could change over time.
Kim, who immigrated to New Zealand from South Korea with her family in 1997, started out playing piano when she was 6 or 7 - a bit later than many such as Hall who started playing violin when she was 3.
Kim initially took up piano as it was an instrument her mother had always wanted to play but never had the opportunity to, so she wanted her daughter to have that option.
"I think it became apparent very quickly that I really enjoyed it. It became something I became obsessed with. And I’ve had a string of really wonderful teachers who helped sort of guide me in the right direction."
That obsession never waned growing up. She studied music at the University of Auckland for five years and then did a further three years of study at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Kim admitted it was not until her honours year at the University of Auckland that she began to see it as evolving into a career.
"I had some things happening in my personal life and I had an epiphany and realised that this is what I really wanted to do.
"I think I just took something that I knew I could be really good at and something that I really enjoyed and tried to push myself as far as I could."
She felt like for a long time she got by on natural ability, but during her honours degree she realised she had a chance to go further so she "worked like I’d never worked before".
"One thing led to another. ... A mixture of hard work, great guidance and good luck.
"There are lots of great musicians out there. We all strive to be as prepared as you can be so that when the moment comes or when you do get lucky with a connection or an opportunity, then you’re sort of in the best position possible to make most of that."
These days it is rare to have a career where a pianist just plays concertos with orchestras.
Kim studied solo piano to master’s level and then went on to study for a collaborative piano degree.
"It takes just as much technique and artistry to do things that aren’t solo piano. And that’s sort of why I wanted to make sure that I was technically sound and ready for all the challenges that I would face."
During the degree she learnt the repertoire for violin, cellos, arias, operas and lots more.
"It was just like baptism of fire ... I went to so many lessons and coachings and did so many auditions and competitions. I was like a sponge.
"Although I had such great musical opportunities in New Zealand, it is still a relatively culturally young country, to then go to London where it’s just exuding culture and art. I got to make really strong connections with these fantastic musicians from all over the world."
It turned out to be the perfect preparation for joining the trio.
"The trio job is really the only job that I would have moved back to New Zealand for."
To see:
NZTrio Triptych 3: Untamed Hope
Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Nov 22, 7pm
Lodge at the Hills, Arrowtown, Nov 23, 7pm.
