Passion for Piano Gives Senior Balance

Senior Paul E. Kwak ’03 uses his virtuosity in piano and his passion for music to inspire others.

In addition to directing “Songs for a New World” at the Agassiz Theater this year, Kwak—a co-founder of the Harvard Piano Society—will be in three collaborative performances this weekend, performing pieces by Beethoven, Loeffler and Brahms.

While he focused on solo pieces during his first two years at Harvard, during his junior year he says he found that chamber music balanced his love for people and music.

“The reason we do it over and over, every semester, in multiple groups, is not just because we love the music, but because we love the people with whom we play,” he says.

Chamber music also allows pianists to be integrated into the Harvard musical community, which is primarily orchestral. According to Kwak, it is “the best way for pianists to get involved.”

Kwak says that the music scene at Harvard is, “in a word, amazing.” He believes that having a liberal arts education imbues music performances with greater sensitivity. “To understand the culture [the music] comes from,” he says, “has made me a more perceptive and questioning musician and individual.”

But what he finds best about music at Harvard, he says, is the passion each artist brings to it. “It’s not a conservatory where this is your life and you have no choice but to do music,” he says. “Everyone does it because they love it.”

Kwak possesses not only technique but musicality. Emotion infuses his performances.

Kwak will be attending Oxford University in the fall studying for his Masters in Comparative Social Policy, followed by a year pursuing a Masters in Collaborative Piano at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music in New York City.

While he has considered becoming a professional musician, he has decided against it. For Kwak, music is his “escape.”

“It works in my life because it’s in balance with the academic rigor of school,” he says. “If I became a professional musician, I would, in many ways, have no escape, and I’d think I’d grow to resent music.”

In light of this fear, he plans to attend medical school after Juilliard. What ties all of his pursuits together is his love for spending time with people, whether communicating through healing or the universal language of music.

Kwak generally finds no more than two hours a day to practice on his own, probably more than most Harvard musicians. Weekly private lessons with Patricia Zander of the New England Conservatory keep him motivated. On the other hand, rehearsals are “incessant.”

“There have been days where I rehearse up to ten hours.”

With the majority of his days immersed in sound, he spends much of his precious free time in “meditation and prayer.”

—Kwak will perform at 3 p.m. on Saturday in the Fogg Art Museum, 32 Quincy Street.