Continuous Transformation `Reflecting the Times,` Strong Passions

The `First Line Subway` is strongly connected with me. Kim Min-Ki is the person who has awakened and supported me through his music and personality when I was in conflict with my elderly family members due to my musical dream.

When I returned from the U.S. after finishing my study., Kim was adapting a German musical for a performance. Although his work was hard, he had passions. This work was the `First Line Subway,` a rock musical which has been played at Hakjeon Theater since 1994.

Continuing my connection with this work, I wrote music for a record of Na Yoon-Sun, who had been played as a fairy in the first performance. I introduced the `First Line Subway` through the MBC`s `Wednesday Art Stage,` a TV program that I has been working as a host, in advance of the musical`s play in overseas and large theaters.

Recently I went to the theater to see the musical again, and the theater was full of audiences. Performing a work for 1,400 times has been difficult without a strong will. In addition, continuously changing and transforming its contents by reflecting a socieity`s circumstances has been impossible without enormous amount of passions.

It was a stage that was full of the actors, actresses, and live band`s high quality performances and stable lighting and sound. Although its original work is a foreign, the musical was not strange at all, seemed like a Korean work, and was a very fresh work at the same time. This musical received Germans evaluation that it was better than the original work, and many people has praised its modern sense, such as the adding of lab.

The overseas reports have said that this work evoked sympathies of Japanese and Chines with an oriental sentiment. However, I am clapping Kim Min-Ki for his 9-year new experiments with a firm mind.

Like Kim who has been always supported me in invisible ways since my difficult 20s, the `First Line Subway` will become a helpful work for many young people.

Kim Gwang-Min (Jazz Pianist, Professor of the College of Performance Arts, Dongduk Women`s University)