AN IMMIGRANT'S LIFE: FROM COMPOSER TO COOK.

Byline: ALEX DOBUZINSKIS Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA -- The smells of soy sauce and sesame oil waft through the air most mornings at the Valencia Market as Sonia Sunkyung Lee works on her compositions.

Lee learned music in Vienna, and a publishing company in the Austrian city has published her music. She taught music at a South Korean university.

But for the last three years, the mother of three has spent less time composing music and more time helping at her husband's Korean grocery store. She has learned to take a creative approach to the barbecued beef and marinated ribs she makes for customers.

``I use the same method to compose like to cook,'' Lee said.

That means picturing in her head how she wants the final product to taste and look, dividing up the ingredients and delegating tasks to two assistants.

The result is a product customers compliment Lee on -- no small feat, since learning how to make the marinades involved long-distance calls to her mother-in-law and poring over Korean recipes.

Lee, 46, said it was hard for her to give up her job teaching at Kyung-won University in Seoul and work in the grocery store, because she was left with no time to compose.

``In Korea I never cooked like that, but here I cooked and I served things,'' Lee said. ``And I think God made me very humble.''

Now Lee splits her working days between making dishes and working the counter at the Valencia Market, giving private lessons and teaching music one day a week to small groups of students at World Mission University, a Christian school in the Mid-City area of Los Angeles.

It's not uncommon for immigrants to the United States to find themselves doing jobs that are different from what they trained for, said Sheldon Helfing, who teaches sociology at College of the Canyons.

``Many people kind of resent it, but they accept it. ... And the other part of it is maybe not so much resentment; they have to change something they love doing to something else that's practical because they have to support their family,'' he said.

Lee has composed more than 50 pieces of music in her career, many of them avant-garde compositions that allow the performer to choose the pace, speeding through it in 10 minutes or stretching it out to half an hour.

But Lee hasn't composed anything in five years. She's been too busy with work and family. And something else has been happening: Lee's become more devoutly Christian, and she said her thinking has changed.

Now she's working on a new project composing choral music for church. It's much different from her past work.

``Before my music was abstract and very structured, but now I want to write different music,'' she said. ``Very spiritual and inspirational.''

Lee and her husband, Myung Cheol Lee, 47, met in Vienna, where she was studying music and he was studying economics. They married there in 1987.

Since then they've lived in the United States and Korea, and from 1997 to 2000 she lived in Seoul while he lived in Southern California. Now, the grocery store is in good shape, Lee wants to devote herself more to music -- and her husband agrees.

``Sonia should (go) back to music,'' he said.

alex.dobuzinskis(at)dailynews.com

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Sonia Sunkyung Lee is among the growing Korean population in Santa Clarita. Like many immigrants, Lee has had to dramatically change careers to carve out a life in the U.S. She has gone from music teacher and composer to helping in the family market.

David Crane/Staff Photographer