What sound did you grow up listening to?
I grew up listening to music all the time. I would wake up in the morning and there would be music playing in the house. My mom always had the radio on, I think it was KBS (Korea Broadcasting System) classic FM, and the sounds of that music really inspired me to play and compose later in life. I could picture in my head the sounds of instruments, the structure of a song, and how the notes connected.

Do you remember how old you were at the time?

I can't say exactly because I was a kid, but I listened to that kind of music until I was living in a dorm in middle school.

Did you ever hear a real instrument as a child?

My aunt played the gayageum, but she lived in Daegu and I lived in Seoul, so I didn't see her very often. Of course, when we had family gatherings, she would often play an instrument. Most of the instruments I heard were the piano and gayageum, which I practiced.

I heard that the first instrument you started playing was the piano.

I was very young, so I don't remember exactly when I started playing the piano. I think I was about 3 years old because I started before I learned Hangul, and my mom was a composer, so I think she taught me piano early on.

What made you switch from piano to Gayageum?

I was learning piano with my mom and my teacher, but it was too difficult and I was afraid that I would be scolded if I didn't do well. I quit piano and tried to learn the cello, but that didn't seem to be for me either, I guess bowed string instruments are not for me. Then I decided to learn Gayageum, and I started playing when I was ten years old and have been playing ever since.

You've been playing an instrument for quite long time, and it seems like that creates a special relationship or perspective with it. What does playing an instrument mean to you?

When I first discovered Gayageum after playing Western instruments, it was a huge shock. I would play the score exactly and it wouldn't sound the way I expected it, it would sound different, and the pitch would change every time I played it. But later on, I found that is interesting part of Gayageum. For me, the instrument was a kind of escape, and playing an instrument is like having your own world. In the end, I think the act of playing is matters, not the instrument.


You've worked on a variety of projects ranging from Sanjo to contemporary music, I think it's unusual that you first made your debut with a contemporary music group ‘Aura’ and later released a traditional Sanjo album.  Why were you drawn to working with contemporary music, which is an unfamiliar world for traditional musicians?

After I started playing Gayageum, I played traditional music all the time while I was in school. Traditional music is the music of training, and you have to keep practicing for a long time to build up your skills. Contemporary music, on the other hand, is interesting for me because I can practice and see immediate results. Sure, it's also hard to practice, but once you get past a certain point, it's incredibly liberating. I think that's why I liked it.

You've been exposed to a variety of musical languages from the East and West since childhood. Do you have your own perspective based on that experience?

People who are trained in Korean traditional music are relatively weak in harmony, but I didn't find it difficult to approach harmony because I listened to a lot of homophony or polyphony music from a young age. My aunt's Gayageum and the Bach I practiced on the piano were all familiar to me, so I can freely use both musical launguages. In fact, the music I am most familiar with is the 'Missa' music I heard in the Catholic church, and when I visit the countryside with my parents, I also listened to a lot of old pop songs like the Carpenters and Julio José Iglesias. So, I think I've developed an animalistic sense of what role I need to play in the music I have to play, whether it's from East or West.

Is there any particular piece of music that you consider more important?

The first thing that comes to mind is Bach. When I first learned to play the piano, I practiced a lot of Bach's pieces, It was weird because Mozart's pieces are hard to memorize right away, but Bach's pieces are easy to memorize right away.

In your late 20s, you experienced artist residencies in Austria and the U.S. What did you learn differently than when you were in Korea?

In Korea, I experienced a wide range of music from classical to contemporary, so I was confident that I could do well wherever I went, but the first time I improvised in Austria, it was very different from my expectations. It was improvisation without score, and it was a mess by my standards, but people thought it was a good start and liked it. During the residancey, I learned a lot about looking at music as an accumulation of process not a result. Before the residency, I was practicing in a straight line with the goal of playing a certain piece perfectly, but I realized that there was a bigger world beyond that. It was such an intense experience that I can divide my music into before and after the Austria residency.

Can you give me more details about the music as “an accumulation of process not a result”

For example, when musicians from different countries meet and play together, there are so many different sounds. Just as foreigners don't know the sounds of our traditional instruments, like Seng-Hwang and Haegeum, we don't know the sounds of foreign instruments, and even if we do, we have no idea what sound the musician in front of us will make. Instead of trying to predict it, just listen, let it flow, and focus on the process of making music together.

I feel that the musical direction of the first album, “This Is Not a Gayageum,” and the second album, “The Most Beautiful Connection,” are very different. In the second album, I can feel the scents of American minimalist music. Do you think the overseas residency experience made this difference?

Yes, that's right, I put everything I learned and felt during my residencies in Austria and the US and my solo tours abroad into my second album. The first album was based on my experiences and I plucked my own Gayageum strings to make music, which was a simple approach for a young artist. The second album was much different in that it focused on me and broadened my perspective on the world.

Let’s get back to sound, I'm curious if there's a sound that you value most when playing and composing.

Timbre. More specifically, Timbre and the energy it gives off, neither of which are written in musical notation. I try to find my own timbre that is comfortable and honest, not pretentious or fake. Not necessarily a pretty, but an honest one that comes from an honest life.

How do you get started when making music? Everyone's creative process is different, but as someone who identifies as a performer, what is your starting point?

I start with habitual sounds. I used to pick and tune the strings before I start playing, and I think the music starts from the habits and patterns of my fingers. It's different for people who work on a computer, but when you play an instrument, you're a physical person, so there are things you do unconsciously. But as you practice, you realize that your unconscious starting point is different every time. If your unconscious sounds are always the same, you'll end up with boring, uninteresting music, so you need to practice a lot and have a lot of different experiences to write good music.

What do you usually practice?

Before I got the morning radio job, I would play the Sanjo every morning as soon as I woke up, and I would practice very basic things. I practice making finger plucks, snaps, and flicks on the beat with the metronome on.


One of the keywords in this interview is 'contemporary'. I'm interested in where the different contemporary or uncontemporary sounds that exist in our time come from and how we relate to them. How do you think about the concept of contemporary?


For me, contemporary is the music I listen to now, the people I meet now, the events and thoughts that are happening now. When I think of a keyword for contemporary, nothing comes to mind right now, except for doctoral thesis I'm writing right now. (Laughs)

Let's ask a similar question in a slightly different way. How is a gayageum player today different from a Gayageum player 100 years ago?
In the old days, you couldn't do anything without your teacher's permission, and there would have been gender-based limitations. Nowadays, I think we can try various things and have the courage to make a new sound. That's what I'm doing with my Gayageum.

Many musicians spend a lot of time and effort learning musical languages and techniques that were created long time ago. Have you ever imagined the time and history that's embedded in the your music?
All the time. Especially when I'm playing Sanjo, amd i'm doing it right, I feel like I'm in a time machine. I also try to imagine what the teacher who gave me the lesson told me about his teacher. Traditional music is passed down from teacher to student, so I wonder where the sounds I'm learning came from.

As a musician, is there a particular time or place that you are particularly attached to?

I don't have any particular feelings about a particular time or place, I think what I'm doing now is the best thing. (Laughs) I play traditional instruments, so maybe that's why I don't have a longing for exotic places, but I sometimes envy other instrumentalists who have a nostalgia for a certain era.

You also released an album with drummer Kim Chaek on the theme of Munmyo-jaereak(the court music). Court music is much older than Sanjo. How do you feel when you play such music?
I don't know if it's right to say that I can feel the time, but I do feel ecstatic. I don't have much experience playing court music because I mostly play solo pieces and contemporary music, and I wonder if the musicians at the National Gugak Center feel that way every time. I approached that album with the ambition of showing the flavor of Confucianism. (Laughs) After all, it's obvious that Joseon society was influenced by Confucianism, and I wanted to show that Confucian music is like this.

Talking about Confucianism and Confucius in music today sounds like a very uncontemporary events. Are there any Confucian influences in your music?

When I'm preparing our second album <The Most Beautiful Connection>, I read Confucius' Analects, and the basic idea of the Analects is that you and I are different, but we can only create the world by harmonizing with each other, and the most important medium of that harmony is music. That's where <The Most Beautiful Connection> began. Nowadays, Confucianism seems to be distorted to suit one's own convenience, full of lionizing language and the idea that you should honor your elders unconditionally.

Do you have any musical influences from other eras besides Confucianism?

I once fell in love with monophony. I have nuns in my family and attend a lot of masses in the cathedral, so I'm quite familiar with religious music. I released an album of Gayageum chants in 2017, and I had to select and arrange old music that was not in violation of copyright. I found and listened to old chants with the nuns, and the experience of arranging and performing historical European music on traditional Korean instruments was really special for me personally.

Final question. If you had a recorder that could record the most important sound you've ever heard, what do you think it would be?
It would be the sound of my mother's FM radio.