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Event news: K-music 2017 — Heemoon Lee & Prelude, 24 Sept

Last year’s K-music gig in the Albert Hall’s Elgar Room was a great success. This year’s blend of jazz and Korean traditional folk music looks to be equally as promising.

Heemoon Lee & Prelude

Sunday 24 September 2017, 8pm
LONDON Royal Albert Hall Elgar Room | Kensington Gore | London SW7 2AP
£15 + booking fee | Book tickets

Korean Man

Seven Korean men created a show for the National Theatre of Korea – and now it’s touring the world! Korean Man takes a hilarious look at male/female roles today, blending Korean folk music and jazz

Their visually stunning show is led by extraordinary singer Heemoon Lee, and features the jazz group Prelude, who came together at Berklee School of Music.

The Lee Hee Moon Company, led by traditional Korean lyrical storyteller ‘sorikkun’ Heemoon Lee, is comprised of singers, musicians and dancers from a variety of disciplines. Lee’s performances attempt a hybrid of genres, taking the vast repertoire of folk songs ‘minyo’ of the Gyeonggi area as motif. He brings traditional Korean vocal music, which has been sidelined in the Korean art world, to the core and creates a distinctive sound that suggests to the audience a new way of appreciating vocal music.

With his recent collaboration with the Jazz band Prelude, he presented a perfect musical harmony of East and West that included a reinterpretation of 9 kinds of minyo, each assigned with a visual idea, unique storytelling and performance. By rearranging the most famous minyo, ‘Jabga,’ with jazz vocabularies, the company is discovering a musical apparatus that clearly portrays the sensibilities of Jabga. The bluesy arrangement of the mournful song, ‘A Widow’s Prayer,’ maximizes a feeling of sadness and ‘Cloudy Days in June and July’ about a young servant is arranged in a swing style, making the character come alive as it humorously satirizes the times.

Showing both creative energy and virtuosity, the company were acclaimed as ‘the best possible collaboration’ expressing a ‘new iconic musical language integrating the essential sentiments and musicality of minyo and jazz.’

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(automatically generated) Read LKL’s review of this event here.