Like-minded musicians team up for crossover music

Members of "G.rium Ensemble" pose in this photo. From left are cellist Choi Jeong-joo, violinist Ryu Si-yeon, flutist Yoon Hye-ri, pianist Lee Hyung-min, violist Shin Yoon-kyung and violinist Lee Kyung-sun. Courtesy of Universal Music Korea

Six classical musicians release album featuring folk music, children's songs

By Park Ji-won

Classical musicians tend to be orthodox when it comes to their musical turf, and thus they rarely traverse musical boundaries. A group of musicians, however, broke that norm and crossed genre lines to release an album featuring folk music and children's songs played in an ensemble format traditionally labelled as "classical."

Cover image of G.rium ensemble's recent album "Mama, Sister," released on May 4 / Courtesy of Universal Music Korea

Now in its third year "G.rium Ensemble," consisting of university music professors ― pianist Lee Hyung-min of Dankook University, violinist Lee Kyung-sun of Seoul National University, violinist Ryu Si-yeon of Sookmyung Women's University, violist Shin Yoon-kyung of Kookmin University, cellist Choi Jeong-joo of Chugye University for the Arts and flutist Yoon Hye-ri of Seoul National University ― released "Mama, Sister," the first album of the troupe on May 4 to celebrate Family Month. The album includes 12 locally famous songs such as "Arirang," "Spring in My Hometown" and "Pong-dang Pong-dang."

Although rare, they are not the first classical musicians to play arrangements of nursery rhythms and traditional songs.

Since 2015, pianist and Seoul National University professor Park Jong-hwa has been running a project to play children's songs on piano and other instruments traditionally associated with Western art music. And pianist Chung Myung-whun and cellist Chung Myung-wha played traditional songs on their 1994 album.

Compared with these two projects, the work of the ensemble members is more diverse in terms of format. They also sometimes play music in trio or quartet settings.

Also, the songs are sophisticatedly arranged in concerto and fantasy forms suitable for the group's instrumentation.

Pianist Lee Hyung-min, a professor at Dankook University and a member of performing group "G.rium Ensemble," speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at its headquarters in Seoul, Thursday. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

Pianist Lee Hyung-min, a professor of Dankook University Department of Music, artistic director of G.rium Hall by SK Chemical and a member of the ensemble, said the ensemble decided to release the album after being touched by the natural beauty of Korea's traditional music and enthusiastic responses from audiences when they played the music earlier.

"The ensemble was launched in 2018 aiming to spread classical music to the public. We have been playing some children's songs and traditional folk songs to give a fun twist during our (somewhat difficult) classical concerts. But people loved it so much. I saw some audiences crying while listening to our 'Spring in My Hometown.' We were also deeply touched while playing them. We all naturally thought there is something rooted in our traditional songs and children's songs that we immediately understand. So we started to play them more often during our concerts and it ended up becoming an album," Lee said during an interview with The Korea Times held at the company's headquarters in Seoul, Thursday.

Lee said the members of the ensemble thought it was the perfect time to try something new as they spent a good amount of time studying and playing "classical" music.

"If I were in my 30s, I may have been afraid of playing other genres. But most of our members have spent more than 20 years in teaching and have studied classical music their entire lives. We spent a good amount of time on it. Of course, we didn't go through war in person and studied the country's history in books, but we were all touched by past events. So we thought now it is the time to play our touching music."

Lee said the group tried hard not to ruin the beauty of the music's simplicity in the album by playing them with less vibrato while applying some bow techniques used in playing Korea's traditional instruments to give the arrangements a more natural sound.

"When recording children's songs, in particular, we tried hard to express innocence and cleanness by not using too much vibrato… professor Ryu, who plays violin, also adopted some bowing techniques and characteristics of the haegeum, a traditional Korean two-string instrument, after studying it for several years to well present the traditional music which suits traditional instruments."

Despite social distancing measures in place due to the coronavirus pandemic, Lee said the ensemble is poised to have more concerts in a way to entertain a wide range of people in the country and overseas, hoping to have more concerts in the near future including charity recitals, to spread the joy of Korea's traditional music as well as that of the classical music of Europe.

The ensemble was originally planning to release the album in February, but failed to do so due to the delays in recording after the coronavirus began its spread. It was also scheduled to perform in Yanbian in May, where there are many Chinese citizens of Korean heritage, but it was also canceled due to the infectious disease.

"We haven't decided on a detailed schedule, but we are planning to hold charity concerts for the public in Daegu, who have been hit hard by the coronavirus. We are also preparing to play the national anthem in the near future," they said. "Although people don't really listen to physical albums these days, I guarantee that it is worth owning a physical copy of our album because we all gained great satisfaction in creating it."