Serving the San Francisco Bay Area New Music Community

Fri, Apr 21 2023 8:00 PM


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Hyunchae Kim, kayageum
Hyo-shin Na’s Music for Kayageum Solo

All works by Hyo-shin Na
Almost Nothing (2019)
Song of Pure Nothing (2019)
Kayageum Music (2016)
Sorrow Like Rain (2020)
Clouds (2020)
The Wind (2020)
Song of the Firewood (2010)
Kayageum Song (2009)

Hyunchae Kim has won numerous prizes and awards for traditional music in her native Korea. As a member of the Korean music ensemble Jeong Ga Ak Hoe for seven years, she performed both the traditional and contemporary repertoire. She first encountered Hyo-shin Na while working on one of her pieces for traditional Korean instruments; she has since premiered six new kayageum pieces by Na. She recorded her first album Kim Hyunchae Kayageum Sanjo in 2010 and her second album Hyun-chae Kim Plays Music for Solo Kayageum by Hyo-shin Na in 2021. She taught kayageum at Seoul National University in 2017-2022 and a class in Korean music at Gachon University in 2016-2022. She is a member of the Society for the Preservation of the Choi Ok-sam school of Kayageum Sanjo, and a member of the Asia Zither Musicians’ Association(AZMA). She has recently moved to the United States for the artist in residence program at the Korean Performing Arts Institute of Chicago (KPAC).

Hyo-shin Na has twice been awarded the Korean National Composers Prize (for Western instrumental music & for Korean traditional instrumental music), and in the west she has been commissioned by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the Koussevitzky Foundation, and the Zellerbach Family Foundation among many others, and her music has been performed by ensembles as varied as the Barton Workshop, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Kronos Quartet, and the National Gugak Center Orchestra of Korea. She has written for western instruments, and for traditional Korean and Japanese instruments and has written music that combines western and Asian instruments and ways of playing. Her music for traditional Korean instruments is recognized by both composers and performers in Korea (particularly by the younger generation) as being uniquely innovative. Her writing for combinations of western and eastern instruments is unusual in its refusal to compromise the integrity of differing sounds and ideas; she prefers to let them interact, coexist and conflict in the music.

Cost: $25