Harmony of Opposites: Koo Chang-mo Meets the Maestro of Experimental Sound
We received the arranged score and guide sound source from New York-based musician Shoko Nagai, who completed the 10-song arrangement to perform in a performance themed as a meeting between popular singer Ku Chang-mo and a world-class experimental musician.
It was easy to feel the extraordinary sensibility and talent of Shoko Nagai, a world-renowned musician and avant-garde musical genius, who boldly penetrated the difficult method of combining popular music and experimental music.
As I listened to the guide music song through the song, the overall structure of the performance song focused on the true communication between the singer and the performer, and the emotions depicted in the breath came to my mind as a picture. The awareness of a popular singer recognizing a song as a musical instrument was astounding.
Although this music may seem a little difficult to the layman, the musical emphasis on the experimental encounter followed by the performance has permeated my heart like the color of the blue sky and the deep waters of the ocean.
We look forward to the excitement that will be created by the meeting between the popular singer of the era Ku Chang-mo and the talented Japanese experimental musician Shoko Nagai.
The introduced sound source is an arrangement of the song “A Far Fire Away” by singer Koo Chang-mo, which was chosen as the first song of the performance. This piece, which is combined with the work ”Earth”, created as an introduction to the performance, continues the dreamy but majestic music, followed by percussion instruments and dissonant piano melodies, which give the feeling of wandering around the earth, a distant yet molten world.
In particular, the flow of the music gradually rising through the piano melody, which paints an infinite picture with free brushstrokes and sustains the main melody in the repetitive rhythm of the percussion instruments, lifts the ears.
The work is characterized by the fact that it is not a simple performance based on the rhythm of percussion instruments, but a free percussion instrument unit that sprinkles a variety of exciting sounds like a fountain.
In the second half of the song, the main melody of the synthesizer harmonizes with the existing melody, and the unison flow that ends with all the instruments creating different melodies with the same note is great.
Furthermore, there are many non-harmonic tones that do not exist in the chords in a musician’s arrangement, which is also a signal that requires a high level of improvisation from the singer. It may be a talent for foresight and insight that singer Ku Chang-mo is a singer of excellent musical ability who has composed many of his own.
With all my expectations for the performance, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to musician Shoko Nagai.
YouTube links to the intro piece “Earth” and (1) “A Place Far Away” are available.
I don’t know music professionally, but I have a lot of work. Based on this performance, we will search the world for true musicians who bring heart-to-heart communication without borders and for Ha Misun, a traditional Korean musician who is the heir to the sacred traditional shamanic Sitgimgut of Jindo, Jeollanam.
Author: Lee Il-young
Director of Korea Art Center. Columnist. the poet