One of the world’s most esteemed flute-players, Jasmine Choi, has led a life of almost unstoppable blessings. So she can ignore the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who hated the flute (“It’s too exciting,” he moaned), or Shakespeare (“Oh, that vile squeaking!”), or even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who wrote his father about the flute’s “dreadful sound”.
Jasmine Choi.
Did Mozart really say the flute was dreadful? In the 18th century, the instrument didn’t have the same sounds as Jasmine Choi’s 14-carat handmade Straubinger flute. She’ll be playing those sounds in Bangkok, 16 June, in “BSO Classical Concert No.3” with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra.
Writer-flutist Gary Schoker explained that Jasmine Choi on the flute is something greater than mere technique.
“What I appreciate most is the lack of self-consciousness in her performance; nothing gets in the way of the music. At first I thought that she was primarily an orchestral flautist, but actually she plays many different styles of music, all of them with the same verve and skill. The performances she has posted on YouTube show a performer who is fully engaged with the music and uses every ounce of energy and personality she has to present the music to her audience.
“This is a quality I admire in many of the musicians that I consider ‘great’.”
Jasmine Choi might be exceptional, but the country of her birth, Korea, is known for its flute players. The wooden flute is played in every village, and even poems are written about it. The flute, though, was about the last instrument her parents wanted her to play.
Her family in Seoul was well known in musical circles. Her grandfather was a conductor, her mother a violinist. Naturally she was given a fiddle at the age of three. Two years later, she began studies with the piano. But nothing came closer to her heart than the flute, which she received for her ninth birthday.
Playing it almost constantly, she was awarded at the age of 16 a full scholarship at Philadelphia’s famed Curtis Institute. There, the legendary flautist Julius Baker, after a lifetime of teaching and playing, called her “a huge sensation”.
That was the beginning of her charmed life. In Philadelphia, she was the Senior Division Winner of a student competition sponsored by the Philadelphia Orchestra. And that led to a scholarship to New York’s Juilliard School, as well as the prized award in Symphony Magazine‘s list of great emerging artists in 2006.
A violinist or pianist might have thought of a solo career by this point, but Ms Choi had to make a living. Yes, she had made her first recording, Jasmine Choi Plays Mozart, which includes the concerto she’ll play in Bangkok. But she couldn’t turn down an offer from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where she was associate principal flute.
Alas, in the life of every great artist, disappointments are inevitable. This came for her with an orchestra known not only for its amazing sounds, but its virtually all-male ensembles. Yes, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra might have a woman harpist or a woman viola player sitting in the back, but it’s known as a place that disproportionately favours men.
And in a world where the finest orchestras today are celebrated for their diversity and their international players, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra is not a place where non-Austrians are always welcomed.
At the beginning of 2012, Jasmine Choi broke that glass ceiling. She entered not only as the first Korean musician, but as the first chair principal flute player. At first she was seen as a novelty, then she was apparently accepted. But after a year, the players of the Vienna Symphony voted her out of the orchestra.
This caused wild speculation in the press and among the public at large, and Jasmine Choi didn’t take it lightly. After all, the only other first chair player voted out after a single year was their Japanese concertmaster.
“I was told that my dismissal had nothing to do with my playing. Rather, it was things I couldn’t change: being a foreigner, Asian, female, studying in America, even that I was too friendly with everybody,” Choi revealed.
“What a strange ending we had, after having such a fantastic time playing together in the past concert season.”
Whatever the reason, Jasmine Choi, who still lives in Austria, has gone on to a very rare solo career. Concertos have been written for her, and she has transcribed violin concertos by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky. In fact, she has transcribed one of the most difficult concert pieces for violin, the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by Camille Saint-Saëns, for her flute and orchestra, playing it here with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra.
That and the Mozart Second Flute Concerto will feature Jasmine Choi. But the orchestra will also play the overture to the opera by Wilhelm Gluck, Orpheus Ed Euridice, as well as Felix Mendelssohn’s sprightly “Italian” symphony.
Performing worldwide, she gives masterclasses, has an almost uncomfortably gracious blog, and seems to take everything in her stride.
“I think,” she told a group of fans in Seattle, Washington, this year, “that I am a most blessed flute player.”
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.