Korean percussion quintet to perform April 9
Sonagi Project
The Sonagi Project, a Korean percussion quintet, will perform a free concert at 7 p.m. Monday, April 9, at the Arthur Zankel Music Center on the Skidmore College campus. Admission is free.
The Sonagi Project is a group of five young musicians who incorporate Korean traditional music to create a modern and original performance that shares links with the Shamanic ceremonies of the peninsula. Concerts are usually built around Jang-Gu (two-heads drums), gongs and Pansori (traditional way to sing in the animist chants), performed with an assumed liberty regarding the musical techniques and the forms of the ancient rhythms.
The group's creative approach to give those traditional instruments a movement of renewal has highly impressed the music network in Korea, and since the 2008 world premiere of "Barame Soop - The forest of wind," Sonagi Project is considered one of the leading units in the new generation of musicians.All of the members also have a long experience in teaching their instruments and rhythms around the world.
Korea's ritual rhythms and the Pansori, concealed and banished during the Japanese colonization, have been modernized after the civil war on both sides of the border. The rhythmical shape has been fixed under the name Samulnori. The end of the military regime linked with a large cultural opening movement in the South has stimulated creativity and the traditional music has started to open itself to new styles. Sonagi, meaning rain shower, is a word that is often used as a symbol of the cycle of elements.
Admission for the April 9, 7 p.m. Sonagi Project performance is free and open to the public. For advance reservations click here or call the Zankel box office (518) 580-5321 for more information. The Zankel Music Center is wheelchair accessible and offers listening devices for the hearing impaired. For more information, please visit click here.