Sori Numgi - Sound Skipping
Sori Numgi - Sound Skipping: Je-Chun Park - percussion, Miyeon - piano, Ge-Suk Yeo - soprano, voice.
"SORI NUMGI is the second group of pure Korean free improvised music as appearance in Korean musical history. But already SORI NUMGI got a position of asian avant-garde musical scene. The sound of SORI NUMGI is strong style free music. It is constructed as polyhedron by opera, free jazz, contemporary classic music and Korean traditional music. This is beautiful sample for a crystallization of western culture and asian mentality."
Teruto Soejima, jazz critic, February 2004
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"Singen nach Tuschestrichen
Die Opernsängerin Ge-Suk Yeo musste erst nach Hamburg gehen, um auf die koreanische Avantgarde zu stoßen. Inzwischen tourt sie damit durch Europa, heute ist in Hamburg Gelegenheit zum Hören.
Auf der dunklen Leinwand erscheinen weiße Symbole. Sie sehen aus wie asiatische Kalligraphie, gruppieren sich immer neu, schlagen Purzelbäume und benehmen sich wie animierte Strichmännchen. Eine Besucherin in asiatischem Seiden-Kleid wird von ihrem Begleiter gebeten, einmal vorzulesen. Sie lacht: die Projektion zeigt keine Schriftzeichen - die multimedia-Installation The Talking Wall flüstert und raunt und ist das Rahmenprogramm für ein Konzert koreanischer Avantgarde-Musik.
Sori Numgi - Sound Skipping nennt sich das Trio, und es wird diesem Namen gerecht. Die Pianistin Miyeon streut sparsam Klänge ein, entwickelt selten einen Groove, Je-Chun Park kniet auf dem Boden inmitten seiner Trommeln, Becken und Gongs, die nach verwunschenen Tempeln inmitten des asiatischen Regenwalds klingen. Und die Sängerin Ge-Suk Yeo verwirbelt mit einem kleinen Mischpult und digitalen Effekten sinnfreie Klangsilben mit Belcanto- Kantilenen.
Das Trio gastierte gerade beim interkulturellen Festival Eigenarten in Hamburg, und dort, in Altona, lebt Ge-Suk Yeo auch und arbeitet an verschiedenen internationalen Projekten. Die Koreanerin hat einen weiten Weg hinter sich. Ausgebildete Sopranistin, war sie eigentlich wegen der großen Tradition der europäischen Oper nach Deutschland gekommen. In Berlin setzte sie ihre in Seoul begonnenen Studien des Belcanto fort. Doch in der Praxis lernte sie die Schattenseite des Musiktheaters kennen: die immer gleichen Aufführungen, Abstumpfung und Entfremdung.
In der lebhaften Szene von freiem Jazz und Improvisation fand sie ein Gegenmodell. Hier wird die Musik unmittelbar von den Musikern erfunden, immer wieder neu. Aber es gab auch Widerstände, als Ge-Suk Yeo ihre musikalische Prägung in die so genannte freie Szene mitbrachte. Belcanto-Klänge waren für die Ästheten des Noise tabu. Lange musste die Sängerin um ihre persönliche Verbindung von klassischer Tonbildung mit der Klangfreiheit der Avantgarde kämpfen.
Inzwischen tourt Ge-Suk Yeo international und hat sich auf der Szene als einzigartige Stimme etabliert. Auch als bildende Künstlerin hat sie sich einen Namen gemacht. In der Tradition asiatischer Kalligraphien wirft sie mit dem Pinsel Tuschezeichnungen aufs Papier - doch die verweisen nicht auf poetischen Schriftsinn, sondern entsprechen als graphische Notationen den abstrakten Klängen und Abläufen. So kann Yeo ihre Musik oft einfacher erklären, als eine Übersetzung in Worte das leisten könnte.
Ohnehin geht Kommunikation meist seltsame Wege. Erst in Hamburg erfuhr Ge-Suk Yeo, dass es auch in Korea frei improvisierende MusikerInnen gibt. Die hanseatische Tanz-Performerin Mizuki Wildenhahn vermittelte den Kontakt, und als Ge-Suk Yeo nach Seoul reiste, traf sie Miyeon und Je-Chun Park. Als Trio Sori Numgi sind sie - nach dem legendären Saxophonisten Tae-Hwan Kang - die zweite Gruppe in der koreanischen Musikgeschichte, die sich der freien Musik verschrieben hat. Heute Abend sind sie auf ihrer ersten Europatournee wieder in Hamburg. Im Ottenser Monsun Theater treffen sie auf Gäste aus Madrid und der befreundeten Hamburger Szene."
Tobias Richtsteig - published on 'Die Tageszeitung', Nov 2004
"Possessing a profile so low as to be practically invisible, Korean improvised music isn't often heard in the West—or anywhere else for that matter. However, discs like Sound Skipping (Sang-Joong Ha Music) prove that, just as in many other so-called out-of-the-way places, determined musicians are forging new musical paths that draw on traditional, notated and improvised sounds.
This limited edition CD came into existence because of one of these pioneers. Ge-Suk Yeo, who now lives in Hamburg, Germany, turned from singing as a lyric operatic soprano to vocalizing improvised music in 1999. Since that time she has performed with European and American improvisers including New York reedist Blaise Siwula and Baltimore bassist Vattel Cherry.
Although she toured Korea with those foreign players and others in the summer of 2003, this session resulted from a performance where she joined forces with an established Korean improv duo: Pianist Miyeon and percussionist Je-Chun Park. Park, who uses a unique percussion setup encompassing Korean and Western instruments, also organizes an annual Korean free music festival. He has played with Japanese musicians like guitarist and turntablist Otomo Yoshihide and sine wave specialist Sachiko M., Swiss electronic percussionist Günter Müller and Americans such as percussionist Gustavo Aguilar and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. His partner, pianist Miyeon, has composed soundtracks for Korean television and films, as well as playing free music with Yoshihide, Müller, reedist Ned Rothenberg and drummer Gerry Hemingway.
So after putting it into context, how does the CD sound? Like ferocious, concentrated free improv. Textures on this searing session are pummeled with all the energy you would have expected from, say, Cecil Taylor and Sunny Murray in the 1960s. For the uninitiated Occidental, though, there doesn't appear to be much distinctly Korean about it.
Sound Skipping does get its original tone from the vocalizing of Yeo, whose dramatic, wordless outpourings are definitely in the Shelly Hirsch-Ellen Christi tradition. Being a trained singer, however, means that her output includes echoes of Bel Canto as well as soundsinging and Dada.
Meanwhile, Park appears to be hitting everything he can get his hands on during the five-part live recital that is this CD. Making more use of rattling chains than you'd hear outside of the soundtrack for any film featuring a haunted castle, Park's percussive outlay ricochets from East to West. It includes wood block thwacks, glockenspiel peals, rumbling temple blocks, cymbal scratches, throbbing drum heads, a collection of Western techniques on the traps, and occasions when he seems to be throwing around metal utensils to see where they land.
Oddly—or perhaps deliberately—enough, his accompaniment to Yeo's vocal exhortations and Miyeon's stop-time interjections on Part IV is a combination of rim shots and hand drumming that's as much African polyrhythmic anything else. Then on Part III, his response to the pianist's piledriver keyboard rambles are beats that could have arisen from Native American Indian drummers, and certainly aren't generic to the Korean peninsula.
Miyeon's piano patterns range from this-side-of-romantic rolling arpeggios to Free Jazz-like glissandos, power chording and splayed two-handed tremolo lines that slide up and down the scales. Sometimes she creates contrasting accents during a marathon race along the keys. Other times she consolidates her hand movements into evocative single notes that suggest bell ringing. These noises then evoke percussion sounds from Park that sound like aluminum pie plates being struck, plus wordless enunciation from Yeo, which includes comic opera soprano warbling, conspirational alto whispers, confrontational bellows and commentary gurgled from her throat.
Undulating and ululating held notes, Yeo surmounts any clamor produced by the two instrumentalists, no matter what intensity they bring to their performance. Classical training pays off in soprano lines that vibrate on top of and among other noises. Then there are times, likely as burlesque, when Miyeon and Yeo spend a few moments creating a playlet that finds one impersonating a coloratura soprano at a recital and the other feeding her the sort of chords the piano accompanist would provide in that situation. Still elsewhere, Yeo propels a keening vocal line that is just loud and sharp enough to add dramatic highlights to her role within the trio improvisation.
There isn't much chance of finding this CD in your local chain record store. But its ingeniousness and originality make it an object d'art to trawl for in specialist shops or on the Internet."
Ken Waxman - published on www.onefinalnote.com, July 2004
Ken Waxman - published on www.jazzword.com, July 2004
"The works on “Sound Skipping” represent the past and present of Korean avant-garde music. Je-Chun Park, the percussionist who shows broad musical aspects, masterfully handles free jazz and modern classical, as well as Korean traditional music, and the pianist Miyeon let us dream the bright future of hope. Ge-Suk Yeo, whose vocal control of tonality is very impressive, dominates the stage with passion and grace.
It is believed that this collaboration of SORI-NUMGI suggests the new paradigm of today's avant-garde music. They show a great universe of intuitional free improvising, and will make us watch their future steps intently. The unique groove on “Sound Skipping” never skips music itself, but presents a sweet and juicy fruit which is obtained from the comprehension of all music we have ever known."
Francis HJ Kim, jazz critic, January 2004
