This is the sound of daegeum, which corresponds to “F” in Western scale, or “taeju” in traditional Korean notation. Through this sound, which naturally resonates in the most relaxed fingering of the Daegeum, I want to explore the different timbres and expressions that are deeply embedded within me. I try to express diversity through naturalness and stability, and sometimes the instability that contrasts with it. Through this, I want to constantly explore new possibilities and sensations.“
What sounds did you grow up listening to?
I grew up listening to the piano the most. I started playing piano at a young age, but my sister started much earlier, so I always heard it. The most memorable sound that I associate with music is the sound of classical guitar. I started playing classical guitar in the fourth grade of elementary school and continued to study it professionally until middle school. If the piano is a familiar sound from my childhood, the classical guitar is a sound I heard a lot in my adolescence.
You started out playing Western classical instruments, but now you play the Daegeum. How did you make the change?
It was a coincidence. In middle school, my sister switched from piano to gayageum. I was learning classical guitar, and my parents suggested that it would be better for me to play Korean traditional music in the long term. At the time, I was preparing to study abroad in Spain on classical guitar, and I was very resistant to the idea of suddenly switching to a completely different instrument. My parents said, “Let's go to a gugak concert,” and I went anyway because I love going to concerts, and I was shocked when I heard the daegeum solo of “Cheongseonggok.” The sound was completely different from the classical guitar, and I thought, “I have to do this,” and I started studying daegeum right away, and suddenly I was on the path of traditional music.
The next question is about a memorable sound in your life, but I think you've already answered one. You've studied in Korea and the UK and had music carrer in Germany, have you had any memorable sonic experiences along the way?
It's hard to think of a sound that compares to the shock of hearing the daegem for the first time, but one of the most memorable moments in my musical journey was when I started playing in Germany and heard the sound of Western classical instruments mixed with traditional instruments from other countries. The sound in that moment felt like it ranscended musical boundaries.
Although you have presented traditional music, contemporary music seems to be an integral part of your music. In the program description of your most recent performance, New Momentum (2023), I read the phrase “the possibility of pure contemporary music”. How did you get into contemporary music after studying traditional music?
When I started performing in Germany, my first goal was to see if I could survive in Europe as a traditional Korean musician. Along the way, I met contemporary music and fell in love with it. Traditional music has a structure and boundaries that you have to follow, whereas contemporary music allows you to play freely outside of those boundaries. Through contemporary music, I was able to discover more sounds on the daegeum, and the spectrum of sounds I could play became incredibly wide. My imagination was naturally amplified, and as a result, I deeply fell in love with contemporary music.
In the history of contemporary music in the West, early music tends to be centered around orchestral instruments, and then the interest in traditional instruments from around the world is expanded. Looking back on your experience, is there something unique that you can bring to the contemporary music scene because you play traditional Korean instruments, especially the daegeum?
Speaking as a traditional artist who plays the daegeum, there is a definite difference in the energy that comes from the material of the instrument itself. If you look at the evolution of Western instruments, they have evolved greatly in the direction of making it easier to produce clean, clear chords, whereas traditional Korean instruments have stayed true to their original form, so there is a different sense of how they sound and how they are played. For example, because Western instruments have evolved to produce clean sounds, they often struggle to make noise back into the instrument, whereas traditional instruments like the daegeum already contain a lot of sounds that come from nature, or what we call noise in classical terms. The fact that the daegeum has a different notation system than Western staff can also be a strength. Of course, there are many things that traditional instrumentalists need to think about and work on, but I think traditional instruments have a lot to offer in contemporary music because they have clear differentiating strengths, and they have a lot of potential to make good music.
You are a member of the Asian Arts Ensemble. What does it mean to you to have a group of people playing Asian instruments in Europe?
I was lucky enough to meet the Asian Arts Ensemble in 2009, and all the other members started playing in Europe much earlier than I did. For example, a Chinese player named Wu Wei started playing in Europe eight years before me, and he has a rich repertoire and a solid career in the European music market. Their presence was a good precedent and a relief for me. Seeing both Chinese and Japanese musicians doing well in Europe gave me confidence that Korean musicians can also succeed if they work hard.
Usually when I look at a history of Western music book, the last chapter deals with contemporary music. There are all these big musical trends that have emerged, competed, and faded away, and then you get to contemporary music and it's like, “This is the time when anything is possible,” and I'm always curious about what's going on in the real world behind the texts. Are there any trends you've noticed in the contemporary European music scene?
I think nowadays there's more emphasis and attention on individuality, the uniqueness of the individual, rather than any big musical trend. Musicians also seem to be forming and presenting their own independent characters, and I think there are more disadvantages to being tied to a particular group or school. In terms of musical style, there's a shift away from deep, abstract elements and back towards melody and an emphasis on connecting with the audience.
Your recent performance was titled <New Momentum>. In fact, it seems hard to claim that any music is essentially new these days. What is new to you?
Actually, I've never described my music as new. I gave my first recital in Korea in 2013, and it was titled <Momentum>. Ten years later, I chose meaningful pieces from my career and put them back on the stage, so I named it <New Momentum>. When I think about music, I don't necessarily prioritize what's new. I think more about what I like, what I find interesting.
When people are introduced to your music, there's a lot of talk about new ways of playing. How do you find and create those things?
Many of the techniques used in contemporary music are already well organized in books. For composers, these techniques are now so common that they are often written into scores. Most of the techniques I use are derived from the flute, and since daegeum share some similarities as mouth-blown instruments, I can say that my method of playing contemporary music is an adaptation of those techniques. In this process, it is essential for the performer to think deeply. For example, adding more wind to the sound of the instrument is called 'airy sound' in the score. However, the sound of wind is inherent in the daegeum. Therefore, I thought a lot about what is an airy sound in the daegeum and what is a pure sound without that sound. In terms of technique, there are many younger players who have mastered these techniques, even among traditional players. However, in the process of adapting the technique into a daegeum, there is a significant difference in the richness of the sound depending on the material of the instruments, the size of the inner diameter or mouth, and how deeply the player thinks about the presence of the cheong.
In the program of your exhibition <Reflection>(2021), you talked that “contemporary music begins with the composer's imagination, is shaped by the performer's interpretation, and is completed by the audience's imagination”. There are many debates surrounding the importance of the audience in contemporary music, Is audience important to you?
Audience is a very important. I understand that contemporary music is limited in terms of popularity. But even if you're not trying to be popular, I think it's essential to communicate with the audience. I try to make music that allows for open interpretation, such as “I think this is how it relates to each other,” or “I want to interpret this part differently,” rather than having a precise answer. I prefer works where the audience doesn't have to follow the artist entirely, but where different interpretations lead to different results. I am constantly striving for this kind of communication with the audience. Rather than presenting a clear conclusion in my interpretation of the music, I prefer to let the opinions of the composer and the performer mingle, and let the audience translate them into their own stories. This is also the case with the composers I want to explore and work with in depth.
Our next topic is improvisation. You have been performing improvised music for a long time and is currently the musical director of the Korea Improvised Music Festival. There are many genres of improvised music and many different approaches to it. I want to hear what improvisation means to you.
Improvisation is very important to me. When I first started music carrer in Germany, I did a lot of improvisation, partly because I didn't have a lot of repertoires to play, but also because the atmosphere in Germany, especially in Berlin, was very passionate about improvisation. At that time, I trained a lot about reacting to each other, understanding what the other person is saying, and telling my story. Improvisation is not just playing what you imagine. You have to have an intention and a reason. You have to be able to listen and react to other people's sounds, and sometimes you have to be patient. That way, you can learn and express a lot of different things musically. I still learn a lot when I improvise, and it's always exciting because you can't predict the outcome in advance.
When you're in the audience listening to someone improvise, do you read their intentions or reactions?
Yes, I do. It's great when I'm playing, but it's also fun to listen to and read other people's performances. It's very artistically satisfying.
I think interesting improvised music performances are created when the audience is able to read and react to the performer's intentions in their own way. I feel like the Korean improvisation scene is growing, both for performers and audiences, so what are your goals as a director of the Korean Improvised Music Festival?
I think it's important to create a platform for artists to interact with each other, and I'm trying to create an environment where traditional musicians and various artists can connect naturally and continue to collaborate even after the festival is over. We've actually seen a lot of changes at this year's festival. The Fringe stage is creating an environment where young performers feel confident to showcase their stories and experiment.
The final topic is about contemporaneity. For me, contemporaneity is not something unique to the present era, but rather a time when different eras and backgrounds coexist. In that sense, your presence in the European contemporary music scene with traditional instruments seems like a clear example of contemporaneity. I'm curious to know how you understand contemporaneity, as you must have thought about the term contemporary music more than anyone else.
Contemporaneity means that we are constantly creating something here and now. Tradition is the most basic element that allows my instruments to be made and continue to be played, but what I'm interested in is what tradition does, what it conveys, and how it can resonate with the present. So I think contemporary can be interpreted as a universal orientation of humanity, to understand our differences and find ways to be together, and I think contemporary music is one of the musical genres that opens up these possibilities. Being different doesn't mean necessarily change you, and it's important to make art while thinking about how we can reconcile and get along right where we are. In that sense, I think contemporary music is an important genre that reflects the zeitgeist.
I think that's a pretty good summary of contemporary music. I've often thought of contemporary music as music that opens up those questions to the listener. Finally, let's go back to sound. We talked earlier about the sounds you hear. Is there a particular sound that you're most focused on at the moment?
What I've been focusing on lately is the spectrum of sounds when they are mixed. I want to focus on and experiment with the small details that happen when one instrument's sound is mixed with another unfamiliar sound, and I want to see and explore the quality of the sound that is created. When I go to concerts nowadays, I see that the technique has improved considerably, but I think more research and experimentation is needed to make the texture of the sound richer. In order to improve this, I am continuing to work on pursuing more sophisticated sound textures and richness.
What is the “quality of sound”?
As a simple example, Western stringed instruments use metal strings to produce a distinctive sound. However, if you simply play the piano in the usual way, the sound will not blend well with the strings. To achieve this fusion of sounds, it is not enough to simply adjust the strength or volume. You need to consider many factors, such as the sense of space that the sound creates, the direction of the sound, and so on. I believe that the process of finding a more sophisticated and rich sound through such multifaceted consideration and exploration is the way to create a good sound.
Last question. Assume that this interview is a field recording of a musician. If you put a microphone to yourself, what do you think you would hear?
The sound of the daegeum. In the Western musical scale, the sound would be recorded as F. In traditional Korean notation, it's “taeju.”. That sound is very appealing to me.