Baudouin de Jaer - Five Traces: Geomungo Compositions Vol. III (2024)
Baudouin de Jaer is a Western composer specialized in works derived from gugak (Korean traditional music), well-respected by the gugak field from South Korea. There is no other name on the front cover, which instead features a female performer in hanbok (traditional dress) holding the geomungo, an instrument which was until recently typically played by male performers. Only further one can discover there's in fact a cast of geomungo performers as well as two percussionists on changgo.
At first glance, I was tempted to think this suite is modeled on the sanjo (the semi-folk chamber music genre), yet while sanjo is typically performed by a solo instrument player accompanied by a percussionist who doesn't impose a beat per se, three of these modern pieces are strictly solo geomungo, and on the other two the stringed instrument tends to take a back seat to the more imposing percussion, which is far more rhythm-oriented here than in any traditional sanjo.
The rest of the musical structures, except maybe for the beginning of "Trace V" (and even then the geomungo is used rather differently), don't really resemble sanjo. The composer talks about "geometric shapes", so it's more like the aural transcription of abstract art akin to, say, that of Dansaekhwa (the Korean monochrome painting movement). Not always immediate, but for me it works, as stimulating as sanjo.
classical performers: Lee Jung-a, geomungo Shin Jihee, geomungo Sun Chaerin, geomungo Park Hangyor, changgo Kim Joonyoung, geomungo Kim Insoo, changgo Lee Sunhee, geomungo