The Space Between
juri x gamin x clara
about the project
In East | West, violinist Clara Kim and multi-instrumentalist artist gamin come together in a unique musical collaboration that explores cultural exchange, artistic discovery, and - at its core - a shared humanity. This program is both a reflection and a celebration of Eastern and Western musical traditions, offering works that honor the past while embracing new, boundary-crossing creations.
The performance spans from the deeply rooted Korean sanjo, an improvisational solo genre with origins in shamanic ritual, to contemporary electro-acoustic music. In Christopher Stark’s 2nd Nature, composed for violin and electronics, field recordings of cicadas from northern Thailand are looped, distorted, and transformed, merging the raw sounds of nature with modern digital textures.
Newly commissioned duos by gamin herself and Juri Seo, professor of composition at Princeton, complete the program. By uniting the distinctly different voices of the violin with traditional Korean wind instruments, the project crafts innovative sound worlds and opens fresh creative pathways.
PROGRAM:
sanjo by gamin
2nd Nature for violin and electronics by Christopher Stark
New duo by gamin
New duo by Juri Seo
TECHNICAL INFORMATION:
Two powered speakers for Stark’s 2nd Nature
Program run time - 70 min
about the artists
gamin is a Korean born US based multi-instrumentalist specialized for traditional Korean wind. She tours the world performing both traditional Korean music and cross-disciplinary collaborations. She is a scholar and designated Yisuja, official holder of Korea's Important Intangible Cultural Asset No. 46.
From 2000 to 2010, gamin was the principal player at the National Gugak Orchestra. gamin has received several cultural exchange program grants, including Artist-in-Residence at the Asian Cultural Council, and has collaborated in cross-cultural improvisation with world-acclaimed musicians, presenting premieres at Roulette Theater, New School, and Metropolitan Museum. gamin was featured artist at the Silkroad concert, Seoul, 2018, performing on-stage with the founder, Yo-Yo Ma.
Since 2018, gamin curated performances at the Center for Remembering and Sharing. For 2020, gamin was selected as artist-in-residency at the HERE Arts Center, NYC, and her album 'Nong' was released by Innova Records. gamin's Carnegie Hall solo début, accompanied by Nangye Gugak Orchestra, scheduled for March 2020, was postponed by Covid 19. For 2021-2023, gamin was awarded the prestigious Fellowship by Jerome Hill Foundation and Howard Foundation.
Since 2022, gamin has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses at UCLA's Department of Ethnomusicology, where she serves as the Director of the Korean Music Program. Her courses include Music of Korea, Open Ensemble: Cultures in Musical Dialogue, and academic course, Global Dynamics of K-pop.
Juri Seo is a Korean-born American composer based in Princeton, New Jersey. She seeks to write music that encompasses extreme contrast through compositions that are unified and fluid, yet complex. She merges many of the fascinating aspects of music from the past century—in particular its expanded timbral palette and unorthodox approach to structure—with a deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and classical form. With its fast-changing tempi and dynamics, her music explores the serious and the humorous, the lyrical and the violent, the tranquil and the obsessive. She hopes to create music that loves, that makes a positive change in the world—however small—through the people who are willing to listen.
Her composition honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and the Andrew Imbrie Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, the Ilshin Composer Prize, and the Otto Eckstein Fellowship from Tanglewood. She has received commissions from prominent organizations including the Fromm Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, the Folger Shakespeare Library, Goethe Institut, and Tanglewood. She has released four portrait albums: Obsolete Music with the New Amsterdam Records, Toy Store with Carrier Records, and Mostly Piano and Respiri with Innova Recordings. She holds a D.M.A. (Dissertation: Jonathan Harvey's String Quartets, 2013) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied with Reynold Tharp. She is Professor of Music at Princeton University.
Juri lives in Lawrenceville, just outside of Princeton, with her husband, percussionist Mark Eichenberger and a little mutt named Roman.