Alpin Hong, more than a pianist

Pianist Alpin Hong knows his Bach. He also knows his Super Mario Brothers. Both came in handy at a lecture demonstration May 4 at South Milwaukee High School.

Hong played Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy, Chopin’s “Harp” Etude and Mendelssohn’s Variations Serieuses before the session was over. But he won the 300 or so assembled by scoring his music theory points with melodies from computer games and sci-fi, fantasy and horror movies, with a heavy dose of stand-up comedy. In one bit, Hong, 34, played a terrified kid at his first piano recital. He burst into mock tears and ran off the stage, to the delighted howls of his audience.

Through all of this, he made the point that music changes our emotions, and those changes have much to do with conventions we’ve attached to musical intervals. Hong played a tritone, the most dissonant of intervals, for them, then played the movie theme from Harry Potter. The music a little creepy; Voldemort resides in the tritones. Then he played it again, this time with all the tritones sanitized into perfect fourths or fifths.

“Now, it’s like Hermione and Harry go to Hawaii, and nothing bad ever happens,” he said, swaying grinning to underscore the point. Which the students absolutely got.

He got their attention initially by explaining that his first career, as a ninja, didn’t work out. Then he wanted to be a professional skateboarder, until a rail ride went crotch-crushingly wrong — an episode he illustrated by making a rail of one hand and a miniature skate-boarder of the other. Vocal sound effects delivered the pain and the laughs.

But back to the funniest music theory lesson ever.

It hadn’t occurred, but the observant Hong knew that in movie-music language, the perfect fourth in the hero’s interval. He ran through Superman and Indiana Jones, showing how P4 stands for superheroes.

It’s not so simple with Batman.

“We’re not always sure whether Batman’s a hero or not,” Hong said, playing this theme, like everything he played, from memory. “I takes a long time to figure it out. We don’t really know until we hear… this.” P4 at last, and a hero after all.

“Very often, the hero and villain are related,” Hong said. He does a great heavy-breathing Darth Vader: “Luke Skywalker, I am your father.”

He played Skywalker’s noble theme, changed one note in the mix, and it became Darth Vader’s theme. They’re related.

“That Darth Vader theme, it’s a march, like your principal in a really bad mood marching down the hall,” he said. “But all the villains in the world wouldn’t scare you if their music sounded like this.”

That’s the first level music for Mario Brothers. In a tour de force of piano playing, comedy and special effects, Hong moved through level after level of the video game. He showed how the music tenses up as the game intensifies. All the while, he voiced and mimed the various characters and the absurd dangers they face.

The students were dying laughing, and so was I. Then they settled down completely and immediately to listen to Mendelssohn’s substantial variations. They were on Hong’s side.

During the Q&A, the kids peppered him with requests for video game music, which he knocked out on the piano instantly in almost every case.

“Mario Brothers came out before these kids were born, and so did the Star Wars movies,” Hong said, in an interview after the program. “To them, those things are Classical. I’m amazed at how musically aware kids are these days.”

Hong is a funny guy and likes to have a good time, but the clowning is also a means to an end.

“There is a serious undertone to it,” he said. “These kids have so much sold to them every day; they need the critical and analytical thinking that comes with the arts. I hope I’m teaching them to listen a little closer. Life is so much richer when you do.”

Hong found his way to his remarkable rapport with young people intuitively. He loves video games and loves comedy, and he has remarkable facility for playing music by ear. Those three things give him the flexibility to do what he does.

I kidded him about the breakneck pace of the Chromatic Fantasy, which came early in the hour. He acknowledged that he would never play it that way at an adult concert, but he can’t let the natives get restless at these school things. Near the end of the event, though, he was much more deliberate with the Mendelssohn variations.

“I’m always calculating how much of a certain thing they can take before they get bored,” Hong said. “That final classical piece is a test. No way would they have sat through that at the beginning. If they do at the end, it means I’ve done it right. I don’t dumb things down, I just take a different path to them. I believe that if I can make them laugh, I can teach them anything.”

Hong and his family lived in Michigan until he was 10, when they moved to Los Angeles. He was good at the piano as a kid, but not a slave to it. He also plays violin and clarinet, and he did spend a lot of time with skateboards and video games. He entered UCLA as a pre-med student, but gravitated more toward music as time went on. By the time he realized that music was his true love, he was finishing up a degree in history.

Hong auditioned his way into the Juilliard School and got his masters’ in that extremely competitive institution. But he still feels like a late starter who’s playing catch-up. His career is an odd mix of formal concerts and recitals and crazy presentations for kids and sometimes adults. He’s also started composing and has a music video in the planning stages.

He said that he stands at a “fork in the road” — a road he’s traveled almost non-stop for six years. He and his wife are relocating to San Francisco, where she will begin her career as a surgeon. He wants to spend much more time with her there and have a family life.

He’s trying to imagine a different sort of career, one that builds on his unique skill set. Lots of pianists can play a Beethoven concerto credibly with the Milwaukee Symphony. But no classical pianist can turn pop culture to his advantage as Alpin Hong can.

“I revere Horowitz and Rubinstein, but I also revere Sinatra and Elvis and Victor Borge,” Hong said.

I can see him as a hipper version of Borge made for the 21st century. What sort of setting would be just right? I’ve got it:  The Comedy Central Cultural Program, with Alpin Hong. That’s a show I would watch.

At 8 p.m. Saturday, May 14, Hong will play a solo recital with a special finale, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the 484th Army Band. (Arrive at 7 p.m. to enjoy the free Army Band prequel.)

At 7:30 p.m. Sunday,  May 15, Hong will play solo and then join South Milwaukee High’s chorus, orchestra and jazz band in a celebration of music.

Tickets are $25 ($20 seniors, $10 students) for either concert, $45 ($35, $15) for both. Call 414 766-5005 or visit the website of the South Milwaukee Performing Arts Center. SMPAC, a very nice facility, is located within South Milwaukee High School at 901 15th Ave.