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네이버 공유 카카오 공유 트위터 공유 페이스북 공유

Korean Music Workshops for Western Music Composers

A new approach to the education of young composers is being pursued at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). The new doctoral graduate program in World Music Composition seeks to integrate the Western contemporary classical music tradition with the musical cultures of other parts of the world. An exciting development in this program was a series of intensive workshops in Korean Traditional Music that took place recently in Santa Cruz. For this project, the Music Department at UCSC hosted four Korean traditional musicians (members of the Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea/CMEK) on January 19-February 20, 2009. The program, which was directed by me, as UCSC faculty composer, involved workshops that were held for 15 hours per week, over a five-week period. A total of 75 hours of study in the traditional literature and techniques of the haegum, ajaeng, daegum and gayageum were given by the four visiting master musicians.



Workshop participants included composition faculty, graduate student composers, musicologists, and ethnomusicologists from UCSC, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis. The Korean traditional music instructors were among the foremost musicians in their fields from Korea: Chung Soo-neon (haegeum), Kim Sang-hun (ajaeng), Kim Jeong-seung (daegeum) and Yi Ji-young, director of CMEK (gayageum).
David Evan Jones, Professor at UC Santa Cruz and the Act ing Dean of the Ar ts remarked: “These workshops were amazing! Al l of us were deeply impressed with the virtuosity of the musicians and with their complete fluency wi t h con t empor a r y Eu rope a n t e c h n iqu e s and with a wide variety of traditional Korean styles. For us this was the beginning of an important aesthetic and cultural exchange.” UC Davis professor and 2008 “Prix de Rome” recipient composer, Kurt Rohde, commented: “ I had the exception a lopportunity of a n extraordinary daegeum demonstration by the Korean artist Kim Jeong-seung. I was impressed with the range of techniques he was able to explain and demonstrate, and felt that his knowledge of the instrument’s capabilities and possibilities were remarkable. His virtuosic and expressive ability on the daegeum was astounding, and I am thoroughly inspired to be composing a new work that will include him as a performer.”



These workshops were in preparation for the new collaborative composition project that brings together the traditional musicians of CMEK with America’s top performing ensembles, including the Lydian Quartet of Boston, the Del Sol Quartet of San Francisco, and the New York New Music Ensemble of New York. Based on my design, this project intends to a body of new works that combine contemporary Western instruments with traditional Korean instruments, through a blending of the aesthetics and techniques of the different cultures. These new works will be presented at the “Pacific Rim Music Festival” in April 20-25, 2010, at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Participating composers for this project include 12 distinguished faculty composers from different ethnic backgrounds, representing the musical languages of Cambodia, Japan, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea, Bosnia and the U.S. They have all been trained, though, in the Western, European-American, tradition of contemporary music. Through a process of artistic creation they are seeking to blend their own musical language with traditional Korean instruments (and their idiomatic music), in combination with Western instruments. As a result of related workshops, symposia, discussion, and rehearsals, the participants are confronting and overcoming the challenges involved in combining two very different cultural approaches to art, in ways that can only be accomplished through this type of close personal interaction.

Korean Music Collaboration
The UC Santa Cruz Music Depar tment has continuously presented and developed new cultural/compositional projects involving Korean traditional musicians since 1993. In 2007, the UCSC Music Department presented a Festival for Korean Gayageum and Western Instruments, which featured 11 events in Northern California and in Seoul, in collaboration with UC Davis, Old First Concerts (San Francisco), Ewha Womans University, the Korean National University of the Arts, and the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. Composers from UC Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and Davis d 17 new compositions for gayageum and Western instruments.

Expected Benefits
Based on the success of the recent Gayageum Festival, we expect a significant addition of new works to the contemporary repertoire, using traditional and modern instruments. The presentation of these works will also reach broad audiences through their inclusion at the “Pacific Rim Music Festival,” a major cultural event. A third benefit will be the learning experience of the participants in dealing with the musical and cultural differences involved in trying to combine traditional instruments, designed for traditional music, with the contemporary genre. The evaluation of this process by the related musicologists will add depth and breadth to the research products from this project.
Through many years of offering events, workshops, and courses on Korean music and culture, and by establishing the “Pacific Rim Music Festival,” UC Santa Cruz is becoming a center of cross-cultural musical activities. This project will be a significant development for Korean and Western musical synthesis, leading the way to new research and performance directions in the 21st century.

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