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Format: 
Release Date: 10-04-2003
Label: Celestial Harmonies
Catalog Number: 13170-2
Barcode: 13711317022
Musical Style: World
Track Listing:
| Disc 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harvest Moon (Irish harp, tar) [05:20] | 8 | Love song 2 (classical guitar) [02:31] |
| 2 | Threshing (bowed and plucked Dobro slide guitars) [09:06] | 9 | The Potter's wheel (hun, udongo, synthesizer) [03:59] |
| 3 | Love song 1 (gemshorn) [02:16] | 10 | A Monk reflects (zither) [05:30] |
| 4 | Singer of tales (voice, psaltery) [08:02] | 11 | Summer breeze (classical guitar, vibraphone) [02:12] |
| 5 | Bronze casting (bossed gong, ching, waterphone) [02:35] | 12 | Etching (pyon gyong) [01:21] |
| 6 | A Poet's longing (classical guitar) [05:39] | 13 | Mask dance (gemshorn, puk, bronze bowl) [06:15] |
| 7 | Watercourse (2 marimbas) [05:26] | 14 | Shaman-speak (fujara, piano, metal spring, splash cymbal) [07:11] |
Description:
As an Australian living in a unique multicultural society, I am privileged to count Korean-Australians among my friends and to have travelled to Korea on several occasions as a performer. I enjoy Korea, its music and the liveliness of the Korean people, and welcome the day when the country might become united again. In creating this musical project, it was inevitable that I would want to express something of my passion for Korea’s rich musical heritage, not simply through copying or emulation, but to allow for melodies, rhythms and timbres to permeate my own musical background, through an osmotic process. The result is a mostly improvised and spontaneously created collection of pieces. I acknowledge respectfully, Korean cultural identity and values, and the many wonderful composer-musicians I have been privileged to listen to and meet on my travels. Included are Hwang Byung-ki (kayagum/zither), Kim Duk-Soo (samul nori/percussion), Won Jang-Hyun (taegum/flute), and An Sook-Su (pansori). Each is a master, an intangible asset to Korea’s rich cultural life. Yet mostly unknown to Western audiences in stark contrast with a growing number of Korean virtuosi working in the canons of European classical music. The instrumental palette on this CD is broad. Some of the instruments are Korean and some of the combinations reflect Korean practices. For example, track 4 The Singer of Tales is influenced by pansori - an extended musical narrative performed by a singer accompanied by a small double-headed barrel drum (puk). Lovesong 1 and Lovesong 2 are based on minyo, traditional folk-songs heard in the cities of Seoul and Kyongju. The free improvisations on the zither and the guitar heard on A Poet’s Longing and A Monk Reflects allude to the sanjo tradition. Sanjo might be described as ‘scattered melodies’. It is a solo form devoted to virtuosic performances on a melodic instrument accompanied by the changgo, an hour-glass drum.
Biography:
Mult-instrumentalist Michael Atherton was born in the U.K. in 1950 and grew up in Australia. He composes in a variety of genres and styles including chamber music, screen, radio and theatre. He is founding Professor of Music and Head of Contemporary Arts at the University of Western Sydney, Nepean. Also active in the field of higher education is composer and shakuhachi Master (shihan), James Ashley Franklin, with whom Atherton collaborates on this recording. Since 1994, Franklin has been a lecturer and subsequently senior lecturer in Music Technology at the University of Western Sydney. James Ashley Franklin was born in Australia in 1959 and started playing piano at the age of nine. Later, he studied Western art music together with ethnomusicology at the University of Sydney and trained as a composer. He has developed a musical career bridging a wide range of styles, from classical Western music to electronic and to traditional and modern music for the shakuhachi winning numerous awards in Australia and overseas.
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