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Mina Cho
Mina's playing exudes joy, playfulness and vitality while providing plenty of space for her sidemen to shine.
About Me
The deeper that Boston-based pianist Mina Cho
delves into her Korean roots, the more personal
and distinctive her music becomes. With Beat
Mirage, which introduces her Grace Beat Quartet,
the Seoul-born jazz composer refines and distills
rhythmic and thematic concepts she’s been
exploring in larger ensembles. Beat Mirage
seamlessly integrates traditional Korean
percussion into a jazz rhythm section.
In many ways Beat Mirage is a companion piece
to Cho’s recent album Samulnori Fantasy:
Seasons by her nine-piece Gugak Jazz Society,
her primary creative focus in recent years as a jazz
composer. It’s been the proving group for
unprecedented rhythmic conversations “that often
blend notated amalgamations of Korean and jazz
rhythms,” Cho says. The Grace Beat Quartet
fulfills “my long-standing ambition to create a
platform where traditional Korean and jazz
musicians can organically exchange ideas for
composition and improvisation.”
Featuring Cho’s supple and harmonically vivid
piano work and expert support by Boston bassist
Max Ridley, Grace Beat hinges on the
commanding Seoul-based percussion tandem of
the Gugak Jazz Society, with Yeongjin Kim on
drum kit and Insoo Kim on an array of traditional
Korean implements, including the hourglass-
shaped janggu drum, the barrel drum sori-buk,
and high- and low-pitched gongs.
She’s come a long way since the release of her
acclaimed 2010 debut album Originality, which
led to her being voted Best New Talent of the
Year by Jazz Station. She hasn’t shed deep soul
revealed in that gospel-infused program of
original tunes reflecting her expansive pan-
American perspective, but Cho has turned her
quest east toward her homeland.
“My first album was heavily influenced by the
inspirations I had from my teachers,” she says. “It
was like closing a chapter, and then I moved on to
face a new path where I’ve really tried hard to
find my identity, to understand who I am and
when I feel most happy. I found that Korean music
gave me a lot of satisfaction.”
She wrote most of the Beat Mirage music last
summer while staying in South Korea alone with
her daughter to conduct various projects, a very
difficult time when music became an emotional
lifeline for her. The album opens with “Nacht
Song,” a piece based on a traditional Korean
melody that’s played as part of shamanic ritual.
The band’s chant at the beginning sets the scene
for a spiritual journey that unfolds as a
persevering search for beauty.
“A Bit of Grace” is something of a musical and
personal pun, as Cho’s daughter’s name is Grace.
It’s a sublime ballad with a melody that makes
generous use of Korean ornamental, or grace,
notes, and the sumptuous melody melds musical
worlds, answering Cho’s question, “What is
Korean jazz? What makes Korean jazz? Rhythm is
very important for this project, and different uses
of space.”
Opening with a lightly dancing solo piano
passage, the title track features a deceptively
simple, sing-song tune in 5/8 that accrues
textural complexity as it progresses, while “G-
Street Dance,” another piece inspired by a
shamanic ritual and rhythmic cycle, opens with a
percussion passage that evolves into an Afro-
Cuban montuno. It’s another bridge, connecting
Cho’s Korean jazz concept with her earlier work
steeped in Cuban, Venezuelan, and Brazilian
rhythms. “This is new exploration that’s still in
process,” she says. “But with this piece I’m
creating Latin Gugak jazz.”
If the album has an emotional centerpiece, it’s
“Prints of Imperfection,” a spiritually-charged
work that embodies an inner journey from abject
despair to almost ecstatic release. Keying on
Ridley’s searching arco work, the piece builds to
an epiphany that echoes Cho’s experience coming
to terms with her confined conditions staying in
Korea with her family, while her professional base
was still in Boston.
“I didn’t have my own space and I was sitting up
very late at night in front of little keyboard while
my daughter was sleeping,” she recalls. “I started
with a little phrase that became primary melody. I
love rainy days, makes me very calm, makes your
heart and mind wet. With the simple melody
everything looked beautiful. I realized that with
imperfect elements, you can still feel satisfied,
and that realization made me so happy.”
The album closes with two very different pieces.
“Parallel Destiny (UnMyung II)” incorporates a
barrel drum traditionally used in accompanying
pansori singers, a Korean storytelling tradition.
Cho first used the motif as part of Pansori
Cantata, “The Dream of Gilryung,” the first
extended piece that the Gugak Jazz Society
premiered in 2019. The last piece of the Pansori
Cantata, “UnMyung” refers to the destiny of the
main character named Gilryung, a blind pansori
singer who dreams about meeting her deceased
mother, witnessing the crucifixion and regaining
her eyesight.” When she wakes up and realizes
she’s still blind, but she accepts her destiny with
gratitude, a sojourn set to a 3-2-2-3 rhythmic
formulation, “representing life’s routine when
circumstances don’t change, but your inner self
that transforms,” she says.
The closer is the somber spiritual “If There’s a
Stage for Me in Heaven,” a piece reflecting Cho’s
experience providing music for numerous funerals
at the Boston church where she serves as music
director alongside her husband, a pastor. The
church is an elderly congregation that suffered
many losses during the pandemic.
For Cho, who was born in Seoul in 1981, the path
to jazz started in church. With numerous awards
and competition victories, she was on track for a
brilliant career as a classical concert pianist when
she got swept up in theology and gospel music
while studying at the prestigious Yonsei
University. She sought out private instruction,
which inspired her to apply to Berklee College of
Music, and in the course of studying gospel her
teacher introduced her to jazz. Particularly drawn
to Oscar Peterson, Cho developed a powerful
two-handed approach and before long she was
arranging standards for her own jazz combo,
while also immersing herself in the contemporary
gospel of Bebe Winans, Joe Pace, and Kirk
Franklin.
After several years of study and gigging, Cho
earned a scholarship to Berklee, but her parents
couldn’t afford the living expenses of Boston. Her
church’s congregation took up a collection, which
covered her rent the first semester. And once she
enrolled at Berklee, Cho again found sustenance
in church with a regular gig at the New
Fellowship Christian Ministries, an African-
American congregation in Dorchester.
“Right from the beginning I could share my
experience, playing gospel music and jazz in a
Black church,” Cho says. “A little later, I also
became an accompanist at the Park Street
Church,” a major Boston institution founded in
1809. Currently, Cho serves as the music director
at the Somerville Community Baptist Church,
where she formed a uniquely sounding gospel-
jazz band, including piano, upright bass, ajaeng
(Korean bowed zither), violin, drums.
If living in Boston has allowed Cho to put her
gospel training into practice, studying at Berklee
opened up new musical realms undreamt of in
Korea. Studying with Leo Blanco introduced her
to the verdant but little-known world of
Venezuelan styles. Investigations into a wide
range of musical worlds followed, including
compositions by Brazilian pianist/composer Cesar
Camargo Mariano and Brazilian pianist/singer
Eliane Elias, and Greek traditional music of
Petroloukas Halkias and Christos Zotos. She also
studied with pianist Rebecca Cline, a master of
traditional Afro-Cuban forms; West African Music
with musicologist/theorist Dr. Felicia Sandler; and
Turkish jazz master Dr. Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol, as
well as Korean traditional music studies with
numerous masters, focusing on Pansori (Korean
traditional musical storytelling), Gayageum
(zither), Ajaeng (bowed zither), Haegeum (vertical
string), and various Korean traditional percussion.
Cho graduated Summa Cum Laude from Berklee
in 2009 with a degree in film scoring and jazz
composition, and went on to earn her master’s in
jazz composition as well as her initial doctoral
degree in jazz composition (with a minor in
musicology) from the New England Conservatory.
There, she studied with Ben Schwendener to
scrutinize George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic
concept, and worked with jazz masters such as
Fred Hersch, Jason Moran, Ken Schaphorst, and
Frank Carlberg, among many more. She
introduced a new musical narrative that
incorporates a Korean traditional ensemble with a
jazz orchestra, Pansori Cantata, as her doctoral
thesis.
Currently, she’s in the final stages of completing
her Ph.D. in musicology dissertation, which
focuses on the work of master pansori singer
Dongjin Park, at Brandeis University with the
mentorship of Dr. Eric Chafe, a specialist in the
music of J.S. Bach, Richard Wagner, and Claudio
Monteverdi. She holds a faculty position at
Emerson College’s Performing Arts Department,
where she teaches courses on global
perspectives in music. These courses explore the
traditions of Korean music, Greek and Turkish
music, and West African, North American, and
Latin American music. Her research has garnered
multiple awards, and her academic pursuits
revolve around the intriguing intersection of
Korean spirituality and music history, inspiring
Cho to transcend cultural boundaries through her
musical explorations, all while reconnecting with
her Korean heritage.
As the director of Korean cultural ensembles and
organizations such as the Gugak Jazz Society,
Boston Academy of Korean Traditional Arts
(BAKTA), and International Gugak Jazz Institute
(IGJI), Cho has collaborated with various
community organizations including the Korean
Cultural Society of Boston, General Consulate of
Korea in Boston, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,
Somerville Museum, and many others institutions
in music and arts-related projects. With Beat
Mirage, Cho has taken another major step on a
singular journey that takes jazz and Korean music
into gorgeous new realms where neither have
previously dealt. •
Mina Cho’s Grace Beat Quartet: Beat Mirage
(International Gugak Jazz Institute)
Street Date: February 9, 2024
Web Sites:
www.igji.org/gracebeat.html,
www.minachojazz.com/
Her research has garnered multiple
YouTube:
www.youtube.com/@gugakjazzsociety_gracebeat
Instagram: www.instagram.com/minachojazz,
www.instagram.com/gracebeat.mirage/
Media Contact:
Terri Hinte
510-234-8781
[email protected]
