Jihye Lee: The Sound of ‘Infinite Connections’

News, From the Magazine, Jihye Lee Orchestra

By Josef Woodard I Aug. 20, 2024

“We do have a lot of differences, but we are much more similar than different,” says Lee. “I really truly believe that my very personal story can reach out to and appeal to a lot of people.”
(Photo: Hyemi Kim)

Jihye Lee joins the growing ranks of young, tradition-respecting and medium-rethinking big band leaders, blessed with a dramatic unfolding story, as well as a way of incorporating storytelling in her ambitious music. Born and raised in Korea and based in Brooklyn after studying at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Lee has enjoyed an advancing respect for her elegant and engaging big band writing/arranging. Her own swinging and detail-nailing Jihye Lee Orchestra made its presence known, on a broader scale, on 2021’s impressive album Daring Mind.

But the plot of Lee’s career and artistic ambition has bumped up several notches with her new album on the Motéma label, meaningfully dubbed Infinite Connections. This time out, her integrated compositions explore a deepening interest in traditional Korean musical elements — especially in terms of rhythm — and a passionate, mournful channeling of emotions following the death of her beloved grandmother and her mother’s subsequent debilitating health crisis.

“Sometimes as an artist and composer,” Lee commented, in an interview from Brooklyn, “I feel like I am guided somehow. Without me planning out my future, it just happened very naturally. Why did I think about my identity? Why did I think about my mother and grandmother? And why did my grandmother die at the moment while I was writing ‘Born In 1935,’ about her?

“I happened to be making this record, and it happened to be making me really have deep thoughts about me and my mother’s relationship, and me and my ancestors’ relationship, and my Korean folk music relationship. It all happened simultaneously, as if someone is manipulating me to make this album.”

Conceptual themes have graced Lee’s past albums. Her self-released 2017 April is about the South Korean Sewol Ferry disaster of 2014; she describes Daring Mind as being “all about my New York life.” But given the new project’s deeply personal resonances, she insists, “This one has the strongest concept, because [it deals with] infinite connections — it was everywhere.”

As a youth in Korea, Lee first worked in music in the singer-songwriter mode, but admits, “I was a very shy kid. I still have the shyness in me. People still sometimes don’t get it because I conduct. I never felt comfortable singing in front of people. Maybe part of the reason is because I’m a perfectionist, and if I perform, I can’t really go back and tweak it. Composing, I can always go back and tweak it as much as I want until I feel satisfied. Facing my band, I feel comfortable. I have my back to the audience. I feel home.”

Lee followed a sideways path into big band culture, as an impassioned outsider who had never heard the music before coming to Boston, partly because jazz big bands are rare in Korea. Upon arriving at Berklee, she remembers studying “jazz composition, and of course your ensemble is going to be bigger and bigger. You’re gonna first learn how to write melody and rhythm and harmony. Later you’re gonna learn how to put rhythm section specifically. And then five horns and up. Maybe it was a predestined path for me.”

It’s also a path lined with thorns and challenges, a reality she knows and continues to face. “When we composers get together,” Lee comments, “we always ask the questions. ‘Why do we do this?’ This is not the right business model. It’s a ton of work and very hard to tour with. But of course, the music is very rewarding.

“When you hear the big band live, it’s like, ‘Wow, what is this?’ The human breath has so much power, especially with 13 people breathing together. That sensation gave me so much shock and enthusiasm, as did the lushness. To me, it feels like you have puzzles all scattered and then you are making it, piece by piece. I love doing it.”

Among the guests artists on the new album is sensitive trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, who lends his supple sound and phrasing to the opening “Surrender” and “You Are My Universe.” Other notable soloists along the nine-track journey include tenor saxophonist Jason Rigby, pianist Adam Birnbaum, guitarist Alex Goodman, trombonist Alan Ferber and, navigating the tricky mix of Western and Korean rhythmic pulses, drummer Jared Schonig and percussionist Keita Ogawa.

When asked to summon up a short list of influential big band leaders and voices, Lee immediately cites Duke Ellington (not incidentally, she twice earned the Duke Ellington Award while at Berklee), along with her mentor Jim McNeely, Maria Schneider and younger up-and-comers. She greatly respects Darcy James Argue, who co-produced her last two projects. “He has a very singular voice,” she observes. “I love how he uses guitar and sound effects and spatial aspects in his music. He really pushed the big band sound further from just like a regular big band music.

“I also love a lot of my fellow composers as well — to name a few, like Remy Le Boeuf [leader of his Assembly of Shadows big band] or Miho Hazama [leader of the Danish Radio Big Band and other large ensembles]. Lots of great composers are doing their thing. That’s also a good inspiration, to see how they pursue their music and career. I’m blessed to be a part of that scene.”

Turning back to the powerful personal undercurrents she has embedded into Infinite Connections, were there ways in which she found the process of making the album cathartic and healing?

“One hundred percent,” she says. “In order to get over [the pain], I had to eat it and digest it. I had to be in that zone. I poured all my heart, all my emotions, all my mental torture into the music. And maybe I’m moving on. I selfishly compose for myself, but I don’t think it’s selfish because we are just human beings. We do have a lot of differences, but we are much more similar than different. I really truly believe that my very personal story can reach out to and appeal to a lot of people.”

That said, Lee has yet to decide her next conceptual mission as a composer-bandleader, but she is considering dealing, in her own way, with the various pop musics — including K-pop — she was obsessed with as a child in Korea.

“Infinite Connections was a serious album, which I’m very proud of,” she said. “But maybe, since I did it, next I want to do a little fun, groovy, very easy-listening type of music.” DB