By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter
``Yes, there is room for another Grace Kelly,'' said the Los Angeles Times. ``Crowned'' a hat by jazz legend Phil Woods and cooking up music with the great Lee Konitz, the 15-year-old Grace Kelly is called the next big thing in jazz.
``It's awesome. Prom is a big day but I get to dress up for the Grammy's,'' Kelly told The Korea Times about playing the saxophone at the Grammy Awards After Party in February with the Gibson/Baldwin Jazz Ensemble. She's in town to take part in ``Hoping for,'' a concert to raise awareness about suicidal teens and the physically disabled.
``It's a really, really important cause to play in. It's really sad to have suicides, especially among people my age. The least I can do is play some music,'' she said.
Born Grace Hae-young Chang in Massachusetts, she became a Kelly when her mother remarried. She grew up surrounded by music and started learning the classical piano when she was six. But Kelly refused to play what she calls ``frozen composition.'' At seven, she composed her own song, ``On My Way Home,'' which she later recorded on her first CD at age 12 not long after learning the saxophone.
``She was just 10 and couldn't hold the heavy saxophone,'' said her father and manager Bob. So Grace had to sit on the ground and prop up the instrument with a pillow. Six weeks after blowing the saxophone for the first time, she was performing ``My Funny Valentine.''
Now, with three albums and performances in Carnegie Hall and Boston Symphony Hall among other prestigious venues, she is a singer/songwriter and composer who plays not only the alto, soprano and tenor saxophones but the flute, clarinet, bass and drums as well. The other instruments are mainly tools for her musical compositions.
Kelly has won numerous awards for her songs, including two consecutive Young Jazz Composers Awards for ``101'' and ``Every Road I Walked'' from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Foundation.
``I wouldn't call myself a prodigy, Mozart was really a child prodigy,'' she said. ``I just feel really, really lucky to have found something I love to do at an early age and have the support to be doing it… It happened from meeting one person and then telling someone else. It's been happening really fast, but I'm enjoying it.
``To me, the saxophone is the closest to the human voice and that's why I wanted to start because I felt like I was talking to somebody,'' she said. As for singing, she grew up humming Broadway scores. But sometimes she finds it hard ``to connect with the words.''
Whether it's through notes or words, Kelly said music is all about ``telling a story,'' she said, and she gets to tell her own story when she writes her songs. ``The great thing about composing is being able to capture (all those emotions) and being able to play it. Sometimes it's the most therapeutic thing.
``(My songs) describe me, and they describe me in different moods and different settings,'' she said. What inspires her? ``People and experiences. Sometimes I hear it in a dream or I'm singing it in shower and I rush over to the tape recorder,'' she laughed. Her father said that they'd be walking down a street and if a melody strikes her she'd call herself and leave a message on the answering machine.
``My whole day is just filled with music,'' she said. ``It doesn't give me a lot of time to hang out with my friends but I love to keep myself busy with music. The stage is where I would call home.''
Onstage, ``being able to create at the moment'' is what she loves most. ``Everything is so spontaneous, you know, being able to jam with people you didn't know before, just get up on stage and play with them. There's always a spontaneous feeling and I could play the same song hundreds of times but every time I play it, depending on how I'd feel, it'd be different.
``I feel like the more and more I experiment with music I'm beginning to find my sound,'' she said. Kelly stressed the importance of listening to as many different artists and music genres as possible, like blues, funk and even Ethiopian music. ``That way I soak everything up and spit it back out when I don't know even know,'' she said. As for Korean music, she's familiar with ``Arirang'' but has yet to expand her musical literature.
The youngest student to ever complete the four-year Jazz Studies Certification Program at New England Conservatory Prep School, Kelly will be leaving high school early to enroll in the Berklee College of Music in the fall, with a full scholarship. On May 15, she'll be celebrating her sweet 16th birthday with an appearance at a jazz festival and the release of her new album ``Gracefully.''
Kelly will strut out classic jazz tunes and some of her own songs at Sejong Center for the Performing Arts at 7 p.m., Monday. Renowned Korean artists including tenor/professor Choi Seung-won, clarinetist Lee Sang-jae and violinist Kim Goung-hoon will join be joining her. The concert is by invitation only. Call (02) 766-1517. You can also look forward to see two of her albums go on sale here in April.