An Interview With Pianist Annie Yim

“I love working in a multifaceted way because everything is connected”

Annie Yim

Annie Yim is a Hong Kong-born Canadian concert pianist, creative collaborator, and founder of MusicArt based in London. We caught up with her to talk about her latest project and recent collaborations.

Your current project is ‘The Well Gardened Mind Music Project’. Can you tell us more about the evolution of this project and its outcomes/results?

My current performance project is named after the celebrated and deeply inspiring book ‘The Well Gardened Mind’ by Dr Sue Stuart-Smith, a prominent psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and avid gardener. Coming out of the pandemic, I came across the book after a summer in lockdown stranded in Vancouver, Canada, during which time I volunteered on an organic vegetable farm. Green thumb was never something I had, but somehow, my instinct guided me to connect with the earth alongside an irresistible urge to work the soil and to grow and care for plants. I spent hours weeding, and that was therapeutic! It led me to collaborate with the local community by launching ‘Concerts on the Farm Festival’. The enthusiastic response planted the seed for my initial desire to bring nature and music together – two things that sustained and healed me as I was also grieving the loss of my mother during the pandemic. The book expresses in the most beautiful and personal way how nature and gardening impact our health both as a society and as individuals. I could see a collaborative project brewing then.

With my experience in multidisciplinary music projects through MusicArt, I received a grant from Arts Council England in 2021 to research and develop something different away from the piano. As concert halls had fallen mostly silent at that point, I made field recordings around the UK in the Lake District, the Peak District, and Gometra in Scotland, to explore nature sounds from the perspectives of poetry and environmentalism. At that time, I also got to know Dr Stuart-Smith, and she very kindly worked with me to incorporate words from her book into my concert programme centred around Bach’s French Suite in G major No. 5. I also thought that the programme would ideally include a new piano work written by composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad. I have loved and played Cheryl’s music over the last few years, and her evocative works inspired by nature and literature are unique and incredible.

Cheryl Frances-Hoad: My Fleeting Angel – I. Larghetto (Minerva Piano Trio)

All this is now coming to fruition thanks to the Presteigne Festival and University of West London’s Knowledge Exchange Seed Fund (where I am currently course leader and lecturer for BMus Music Performance at the London College of Music). At Presteigne, the words will be delivered by the actor Christopher Good. Eventually, depending on the technical facilities of future concert venues, my field recordings will be incorporated as part of the performance alongside words from the book to create an immersive and multi-sensory experience. I cannot wait to share this with audiences.

Concerts on the Farm Festival, Vancouver

In January this year, you performed with the Chinese ensemble Tangram in a concert entitled ‘Nature Echo’. How did you come to meet and collaborate with Tangram, and what were the challenges and pleasures of working with them?

Annie Yim Concerts on the Farm Festival 2020

It is such a happy coincidence that I started to work with the collective Tangram on their multi-disciplinary project ‘Nature Echo’, which highlights climate change through visual art and new music. They initially invited me to perform in a Lunar New Year celebration concert at LSO St Luke’s in 2021. I love their collaborative ethos and adventurous spirit in repertoire and concepts, and it’s always an enormous pleasure to work with them. Although we connect first and foremost as musicians, the fact that they actively carve out innovative musical spaces for East Asian (me being Hong Kong-Chinese) voices to be amplified in the West brings us even closer together.

Through your MusicArt initiative you have become known for presenting imaginative and intriguing multi-disciplinary events, featuring music, art, film, spoken word. In your opinion, how does music shine a light on other creative disciplines, and vice versa, and what do you feel audiences can take from these performances?

I love working in a multifaceted way because everything is connected. I love to share with audiences the aesthetic parallels that I find in music with other art forms or disciplines. It is hugely rewarding for me personally to explore through different concert formats how creative minds have always been inspired by one another, whether they are poets, painters, composers, mathematicians or psychiatrists.