Sang-hun Kim performs an ajaeng solo in a premiere performance of When He Was 600 Years Old by Hi Kyung Kim
A recent April noon concert featured Pacific Rim Music Festival Ensemble Korea, in the Bay Area for this and additional concerts at UC Santa Cruz, to be followed by a performance at the Italian Academy, Columbia University in New York. The program featured both preview concerts of new compositions by composer Shi-Hui Chen, chair and professor of composition at the Shepard School of Music at Rice University (When He Was 600 Years Old for ajaeng solo) which was about Noah’s Ark, as well as Berkeley Music Department chair and composer Cindy Cox (Naseon II), which is Korean for “spiral”. The instruments revolve around a central pitch, becoming increasingly embellished as the piece progresses. Naseon II is the second part of a larger work; the first part features an extended solo for the haegeum. Cindy Cox visited Seoul in the summer of 2015 as a Fellow at the National Gugak Center, and while there studied traditional Korean music. She learned first hand about the gayageum, geomungto, and ajaeng, all zithers, but played in completely different ways. The large audience in Hertz Hall enthusiastically responded to the varied instruments and sounds of the colorful performance.