Korean Music Festival: Black String (KOR) | Lee Hee-moon 'NAL'

It is a performance program that introduces the various colors of Korean traditional music, which has continued from the beginning of "K-Gugak" to the present, among the Korean Cultural Festival organized as a special plan for 2023. All performances will be held at Magyar Zene Háza. Black String led by Geomungo Empress Heo Yoon-jeong, Nal Project led by Gyeonggi folk song singer Lee Hee-moon, Park Ji-ha, who expresses Korea’s unique sounds such as saenghwang, flute, and yanggeum in contemporary music, from traditional Korean music to modern music techniques It will be a stage where you can feel new possibilities together through the sound of various Korean traditional music.

Black String is founded on Korean traditional music but guided by universal emotions, freely crossing generic borders while actively working to create a new level of improvisational performance. They present a repertory which is both contemporary and filled with Black String’s distinctive aesthetic. Led by master geomungo (traditional Korean six-string zither) player Yoon Jeong HEO, the band is further made up of guitarist Jean OH , daegeum (traditional Korean flute) and yanggeum (hammered dulcimer) player Aram LEE, and percussionist and vocalist Min Wang HWANG. Black String was selected for the 2016 World Music Expo Official Showcase, and was the first Korean band to win the Asia & Pacific Award from renowned world music magazine Songlines in 2018, demonstrating the excellence and artistic potential of traditional Korean music to the world. Following on from an invitational tour at a series of prestigious international festivals, Black String was the first Asian band to sign with ACT, Europe’s largest jazz label, so far releasing two studio albums, Mask Dance (2016) and Karma (2019), as well as a live album, Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic (2020).

Lee Hee-moon is the National Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 57 Gyeonggi Folk Song Master. He is an artist who has firmly established his own domain based on the foundation of Gyeonggi folk songs without fear of challenges through constant concern about the contemporaneity of traditional art. He has been working to present a new way to hear 'sound' to the audience by bringing traditional vocal music, which has been placed on the periphery of the Korean art world, to the center of the performance, attempting genre convergence with the motif of Gyeonggi folk songs, a treasure trove of vast repertoire. He has continued his work activities by continuously releasing new repertoire. In 2017, as a vocalist of the project group Sing Sing, he was invited to the Tiny Desk concert of NPR, an American public broadcaster, and caused a great sensation. In particular, the NAL Project presented on this stage is a title with multiple meanings. In Korean, 'NAL' as a colloquial expression in which the objective particle 'ㄹ' is added to the personal pronoun 'na', 'NAL' meaning the thinnest and sharpest part of an extension, and a prefix adding the meaning of 'not dried, cooked, or processed'. Just the name of the project has the meaning of a project that sings for me, so that I can stand sharp and not be secularized. In Project NAL, which excludes melodic instruments and consists only of rhythm instruments, Park Bum-tae, a traditional performance expert who has been performing exorcism for over 20 years, holds the janggu durm, and Han Woong-won, who has been pivotal in the jazz scene as a drummer, plays the drums. , accompanied by sound performing expert Shin Won-young.