Joohyun Park

Joohyun Park
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Role:	Musician, Pianist
BSG Universe:	Blood and Chrome
Date of Birth:
Date of Death:	Missing required parameter 1=month! ,
Official Site
IMDb profile

Joohyun Park is a South Korean-born pianist, composer, and orchestrator who has worked extensively in Hollywood film music production and is best known for her solo piano interpretations of television and film scores, particularly her acclaimed recording of The Music of Battlestar Galactica for Solo Piano.

Background

Park was born in Kwang-Ju, South Korea and began studying music at age 6. She received both Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Piano from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, and a Bachelor's degree in Contemporary Writing and Production from Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Film Career

Park has worked as a score coordinator, pianist, orchestrator and assistant composer for numerous Hollywood productions, including Priest, The Informers, Drag Me to Hell, Creation, When in Rome, The Black Tulip, and Love Happens, all composed by Christopher Young. She has also worked on additional productions including Catfish, The Zoo, Life Below Zero, The Rum Diary, and The Monkey King.

In the 2009 horror film Drag Me to Hell, Park was credited among the featured musical soloists alongside James Speight, while also serving as one of the score coordinators under composer Christopher Young.

Battlestar Galactica Contributions

Solo Piano Project

Park's most notable work in relation to Battlestar Galactica is her collaboration with composer Bear McCreary on The Music of Battlestar Galactica for Solo Piano, released by BuySoundtrax Records in 2011. The album features Park's piano interpretations of McCreary's acclaimed orchestral score from the SyFy series.

The project originated from McCreary's Battlestar Galactica Songbook, published by Hal Leonard in 2011. McCreary personally selected Park for the recording project, stating: "My performances, though technically correct, are strongly influenced by the studio recordings I spent years producing. I was thrilled to collaborate with Joohyun Park because she breathed new life into these compositions. Under her expert fingers, these pieces thrive as works for solo piano, not just pared down versions of larger orchestrations."

Park described her approach to the recording: "When I was recording, I was focusing on expressing the feeling of the original tracks from the point of view of a classical pianist. Powerful but not overwhelming, calm but not boring, executing those beautiful grooves with accuracy and making the aggressive passages sound truly massive."

The two-disc album includes all arrangements from McCreary's songbook and features special guest performers, including mezzo-soprano Melanie Henley Heyn, who originally performed "Battlestar Operatica" in the series' first season. McCreary himself appears on the track "Kara Remembers," which was conceived as a four-hand piano piece.

The album package features exclusive liner notes by Randall Larson and original artwork by frequent Battlestar Galactica vocalist Raya Yarbrough. Variety called McCreary's original score for Battlestar Galactica "the most innovative music on TV today," while NPR described it as fitting "the action so perfectly, it's almost devastating: (it's) a sci-fi score like no other."

Blood & Chrome Performance

Park performed the complete piano piece "Coker's Interlude" for the Blood and Chrome soundtrack. This composition was written by Bear McCreary for a scene where Coker Fasjovik plays classical music on piano while at a Djerba abandoned ski lodge. McCreary took great care to make the on-camera performance feel natural, intentionally leaving in some mistakes and allowing the music to start and stop at natural points based on the actor's body language.

Other Notable Recordings

Beyond her Battlestar Galactica work, Park has recorded numerous solo piano interpretations of film and television music for BuySoundtrax Records and other labels:

• Joe Hisaishi: Studio Ghibli Dreams - featuring themes from Hayao Miyazaki films
• Home Alone: The Classic Film Music of John Williams For Solo Piano - including themes from Home Alone, Jurassic Park, and other Williams compositions
• The Jerry Goldsmith Collection - Volume 2: Piano Sketches - collaborative album with pianists Dan Redfeld and Mark Northam
• Firefly: Music for Solo Piano - interpretations of Greg Edmonson's score
• The Film Music of Michael Nyman for Solo Piano
• Music from The X-Files: 20th Anniversary Celebration - serving as producer and arranger
• Music from the Dune Saga - featuring themes from multiple adaptations

Regarding her approach to television score adaptations, Park explained: "I always start a project like this studying the piano arrangement and the original soundtrack recording. Sometimes I follow my own interpretation and sometimes I perform it exactly the way it is."

Musical Philosophy

Park's interpretations of Michael Nyman's minimalist compositions demonstrate her approach to challenging musical styles: "Minimalism is emphasizing musical ideas by repetition with the very basic and little materials. Nyman is a minimal music composer and pianist with great passion. It was a challenge to express minimal music that was written by the person who invented the term, but his great music also gave my passion great momentum."

External links

• Official website
• Joohyun Park on Spotify
• Joohyun Park on Last.fm