UPDATE: The concert has been rescheduled for Thursday, November 21 at 4 p.m. in UCSC’s Music Center Recital Hall.
Korean traditional music and dance--including the U.S. premieres of new works by UCSC music professors David Evan Jones and Hi Kyung Kim--will be presented by master performers of the Korea National University of Arts, Wednesday, November 20, at 7:30 p.m. in UCSC’s Music Center Recital Hall.
Admission is free and open to the public.
“The essence of Korean traditional music will be presented by a 15-member ensemble made up of faculty and students from the Korea National University of Arts (KNUA),” said Kim, who is organizing the event. “KNUA is one of the best arts institutions in Korea.”
"The program consists of traditional royal court music, folk music, dance, and new music--which are evenly balanced," Kim added. “It is a privilege to host a concert of the ‘tradition and creation."
In 2005, former UCSC chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood visited the Korea National University of Arts to meet with the president of the school.
Since then, UCSC has collaborated on a number of projects with KNUA, including the Festival of Gayageum and Western Instruments in 2007, and the Pacific Rim Music Festival in 2010.
Kim noted that the concert at UCSC is being presented in conjunction with a major Korean art exhibition now running at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum through January 12.
She added that two well-known Korean composers’ works will also be performed for the first time in the U.S.
One of those pieces, A Monologue for haegeum solo, was composed by Kang Jun-il, who was a featured composer for Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk-Road project.
The other is Lim June-Hee’s, Dancing Sanjo for gayageum, violin and piano, which was commissioned by the Radio France Orchestra concert master. It will feature UCSC violin lecturer Roy Malan and guest pianist Jeffrey LaDeur.
UCSC music professor David Evan Jones’s piece, Yeonpyeongdo Island for daegum and computer sounds, is one of a series of his recent compositions that use computer processed versions of actual news broadcasts in combination with live instruments.
“These pieces transform reports of some of the difficult news of our day and bring them into the contemplative frame of the concert hall,” said Jones. “Yeonpyeong Island features a report from South Korean radio broadcast on the day after the North Koreans launched an attack on Yeonpyeong Island in South Korea, killing several people.”
“This piece is composed for my friend and collaborator Kim Jeong-Seung who assisted in its development--it is only because of Kim Jeong-Seung’s extraordinary mastery of the daegum that this piece is possible in its current form,” he added.
Kim’s own piece, When He Was Six-Hundred Years Old, was inspired by the story of Noah’s Ark from the Book of Genesis.
“In this music, I have tried to describe Noah’s preparation for building the ark, the 40 days of rain, life in the ark, and the appearance of land and their new life,” said Kim.
She added that it was written for ajaeng virtuoso, Sang-Hun Kim, as a prayer for her brother, Yun-Ki Kim.
“The ajaeng is a versatile string instrument, which employs several methods to produce the sounds—plucking the strings, and bowing the strings with a bow or with a stick,” Kim noted. “While its eight strings makes it somewhat limited in pitch material and scales, it has a rich and wide range of expression through both left and right hand techniques.”
