K-Music Festival in London to offer rich Korean flavor beyond K-pop

The 9th edition of K-Music Festival, hosted by the Korean Cultural Centre UK, is set to bring an experience beyond K-pop with a lineup of artists that use traditional Korean music to find new sounds during the eight-week event.

K-Music 2022 will kick off Oct. 5 with a joint concert by Dal:um and ReMidas at the Barbican Centre in London.

Dal:um, a musical duo featuring gayageum player Ha Su-yean and geomungo player Hwang Hye-young, made their London debut at the Purcell Room last year. This time, Dal:um will collaborate with ReMidas, a gayageum-geomungo duo of Park Ji-hyun and Kim Min-young, performing new pieces written for the upcoming K-Music Festival as a quartet of zithers.

This collaboration was created for the Yeowoorak Festival in Seoul this summer and is presented in association with the National Theatre of Korea.

On Oct. 9, in the Purcell Room in Southbank Centre, pansori performer Lee Ja-ram will make a return to London with “The Old Man and The Sea” inspired by Ernest Hemingway's classic masterpiece. The performance premiered in Seoul in 2019.

Lee, who composed the songs for “The Old Man and The Sea,” is expected to portray the fight between the spearfish from deep under the ocean and the old fisherman with her captivating voice and performance.

A joint concert titled “For Silent Exorcism” by EERU (Lee Il-woo), the leader of Jambinai, and the hardcore rock band trio PAKK will take place on Oct. 13 at Rich Mix in Shoreditch. Jambinai is a band that presents Korean traditional music in a new and innovative way, with their ground-breaking post-rock sound that combines folk, metal, jazz and ambient electronic elements using a mix of traditional Korean and modern instruments.

Dongyang Gozupa, a band that offers cross-genre music with the yanggeum (Korean metal-stringed zither) at its center, will take the stage on Nov. 2 at Purcell Room as part of their international tour ahead of their performances in Denmark.

On Nov. 17, the festival will feature the Sun-Mi Hong Quintet, the winner of the Sena Dutch Jazz Competition 2018.

The last performance which will take place on Nov. 24 at Stone Nest will be performed by Park Ji-ha, a multi-instrumentalist and composer who employs a variety of traditional Korean musical instruments including piri (double reed bamboo instrument), saenghwang (double-reed mouth organ of 17 bamboo pipes) and yanggeum

At this year’s K-Music Festival, she will present her third Glitterbeat release "The Gleam," a meditation on the intersection of music and light.

The event is co-hosted by the Korean Cultural Centre UK and Serious, which produces the EFG London Jazz Festival.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220928000795