Scholar and musician Dong-Won Kim hosts finale concert with GSO
In celebration of the spirit of improvisation, storytelling, and cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogue, the River Run Centre’s Cooperators Hall hosted the culminating performance of improviser-in-residence Dong-Won Kim on Saturday, Nov. 29. The event was organized by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, Musagetes, and the Laurier Centre for Music in the Community.
A large ensemble featuring strings, woodwinds, and brass from the Guelph Symphony Orchestra, the Guelph Youth Jazz Ensemble, and the Rivers Jazz Ensemble (Daniel Fischlin on guitar, Jeff Bird on bass, and Lewis Melville on pedal steel) performed an improvised hour of music under the intertwining direction/conducting of Judith Yan and Dong-Won Kim.
Kim is a scholar of traditional Korean music and improvisation at Wongkwang Digital University, a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, and has been the IICSI’s improviser-in-residence since September. Much of his pedagogy deals with teaching distinctively Korean methods of engaging improvisation, storytelling, and critical practice of music with Western music forms.
With Ben Grossman as the storyteller tying the improvised, multidisciplinary piece together, and Georgia Simms as a solo dancer featured in some of the passages, the hour-long suite was based off of parables and stories from around the world, offering a truly cross-cultural approach to the dynamics of improvised music in a large group setting. With the group’s members reading from the story Grossman read, it was a truly unpredictable, invigorating, and beautiful performance.
Part of the mission of the IISCI is to mediate the act of artistic improvisation with social practice and the betterment of communities. In the numerous “Ding-Dong with Dong-Won” improvisation workshops hosted since the beginning of Kim’s residency, Kim’s time in Guelph has certainly been marked by consolidating these creative aims with thinking more broadly about music, culture, and community building.
The ICSI’s Improviser-in-residence ends his time in Guelph with a visceral, beautiful, and vital improvised performance, featuring a large ensemble of members of the GSO, GYJE and the Rivers Jazz Ensemble. Photo By Heather Gilmore.