Baritone E. Byok Song Woo recounts his adventurous life
“I was serving in a fast food restaurant, I must have been about 15 and we’d only just moved to the States, when there was a hold up. Two guys came with guns and told us to get down on the floor. There I was in my little paper hat, with almost no English, but I understood what these guys wanted. I had to laugh, it was just like being in the movies.” E. Byok Song Woo, Korean-born American opera singer currently residing in Munich, tells the story of his initiation into American society with complete nonchalance. Such dispassionate recounting of dramatic events may be disconcerting to strangers until he or she realizes that for Woo, whose life has taken so many strange twists and turns, experiences of this kind are (almost) the norm. Woo was born in South Korea in 1963, the son of a tailor. His parents, both staunch Protestants, emigrated to the United States when Woo was in his mid teens. Though money was tight when the family settled in California and everyone had to work, he does not remember those years as being especially hard. Compared to his school days in South Korea, which Woo describes as “incredibly Spartan, like a boot camp,” life on America’s West Coast was pretty laid back. And then there was the matter of the teenager’s voice. Woo had been in church choirs for years. Music teachers and choir masters noticed how well he sang, and encouraged the youngster to perform solos. “They really supported me, they thought I had a gift,” says Woo “and so I went off to Italy at 18 to become the next Caruso.” After some initial voice training he applied and was accepted into the prestigious Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. Looking back on this time, which came to an abrupt end when one of his sisters fell ill and he had to return home, the singer pauses to smooth back a strand of his long dark hair and then begins thoughtfully: “opera was where my soul was, but I felt guilty because my parents were working so hard to pay for my studies. I felt it was a kind of luxury, though now I think that attitude was a mistake.” Mistake or not, Woo had to go home and in somewhat of a volte-face began a course of business studies. “I discovered immediately that I was very bad at it. Economy and business statistics were hell,” he flinches. “So I then switched to a course of philosophy at Berkeley.” Woo, however, was not ready or willing to give up his dream of becoming an opera singer. For the next years, while working as a bank teller, a teacher for computer studies in the local jail, a job skills trainer to single mothers, a singing waiter and a salesman for water purifiers, among other things, he continued to take private voice lessons. This unconventional route, which the singer likes to call “doing it the cowboy way,” paid off when, in 1992, he sang in the opera Boris Godonov in Oakland, California. Woo’s performance was very well received and was followed by parts in Iolanthe, Faust, Il Trovatore and Rigoletto. Then, in 1996, the baritone decided it was necessary to take the next step in his career and come to Germany. “There are more than 90 fully functioning opera houses in Germany,” explains Woo, adding “and if you want to make your name in opera you have to have worked here.” While he loves living in the Bavarian capital and has notched up some interesting singing work, for Woo, as for most aspiring opera singers, there have been times of immense frustration, when, despite his best efforts, little or no work was forthcoming. In 1997, during just such a low, he was offered an acting role in the German film Die drei Mädels von der Tankstelle. And, perhaps not surprisingly, Woo turned out to be a talented actor. His role received critical acclaim and launched what he describes as “a snowball effect.” Since then he has played in no less than 18 films. Woo’s real love remains opera and he had a major success singing the part of Nabucco at the State Opera Theater in Görlitz in 2000. He is fortunate in receiving plenty of support from his partner, the Korean artist Hyon-Soo Kim. The couple met and fell in love in Munich in 1998. Sitting, sipping tea at their shared atelier on the Praterinsel, they are patently content in one another’s company, happy to enrich the life of the other by sharing the experiences of their individual art. The petite Kim has been in Munich for 19 years. After studying fine art at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in 1993, she had her first exhibition three years later, at the Ignatz-Günter-Haus. Much of her work is about the fusion of Eastern and Western elements. So an installation at the Laboratorium on Munich’s Praterinsel, 2002, entitled Vergebliche Form (Futile Shape) featured distorted body shapes sculptured from black nylons and filled with Korean rice. Incidentally, the same exhibition included recordings of the baritone singing adaptations of works by Wagner and Pergolesi, lending an extra dimension to a sculpture entitled Kokon. The couple are currently preparing an exhibition for Kim at the Kunsthalle Erfurth. “Nothing would surprise me,” says Woo when asked about his future—probably a good thing considering the financially precarious nature of Kim and Woo’s work. One thing seems certain, however, anonymity is not on the cards for this talented duo.