Chan E. Park earned her Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii (1995) and is currently professor of Korean language, literature, and performance, as well as the director of the Lee Korean Performance Research Program at The Ohio State University. Her specialties include research and performance of Korean musical and narrative tradition. She has published extensively on the Korean performativity and its interdisciplinary implications, including her monograph, Voices from the Straw Mat: Toward an Ethnography of Korean Story Singing (University of Hawaii Press 2003), and five-volume Songs of Thorns and Flowers: Bilingual Performance and Discourse on Modern Korean Poetry Series (Foreign Language Publications 2010-2015). Park was trained in the Poseong style of pansori singing under the late Chung Kwonjin and innovated her bilingual pansori repertoires. She has also presented theatrical premieres including: Centennial P'ansori: In 1903, Pak Hungbo Went to Hawai’i (2003); When Tiger Smoked His Pipe (2003); Shim Ch’ong: A Korean Folktale (2003); Alaskan P'ansori: Klanott and the Land Otter People (2005); Pak Hûngbo Went to Almaty (2007); Song of Everyday Ch’unhyang (2008); Fox Hunts and Freedom Fighters Korean and Western Women in Seoul 1894-1920 (2009) and Fox Hunt and the Death of a Queen (2012) with Kathy Foley; and Hare Returns from the Underwater Palace (2013). She is currently working on the annotated translation of the five canonical pansori narratives.
Ajaeng virtuoso Sanghoon Kim is versatile both in traditional and contemporary ajaeng music. In 2005, he demonstrated this traditional Korean instrument’s potential as a solo instrument through performing the cello score kol Nidrei at Myeongdong Cathedral. In 2007, he produced the first Ajaeng album Kyrie, which became crucial repertoire for Ajaeng players. Mr. Kim has worked with many important Korean composers including Junhee Lim, Manseok Kim, Wonseok Ji, and Hi-Kyung Kim. He has also performed with many prestigious groups such as Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra, Seoul Youth Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra, Harmony Project, and Hanbat Traditional Music Orchestra. A champion promoting and educating about the music of Ajaeng globally, Mr. Kim has given workshops and performed in many places including Pacific Rim Music Festival at U.C. Santa Cruz, Brandeis University, and the Festival Printemps Coréen (Korean Spring Festival) in Nantes, France. He is currently the principal ajaengist of the Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra and a member of ARCO Ajaeng Ensemble. He teaches ajaeng at the Korea National University of Arts, Seoul National University, Mokwon University, and Ewha Womans University. He graduated from Chonnam National University, with Jeonmunsa status from Korea National University of Arts, and earned a doctorate in musicology from the Hanyang University. His teachers included the renowned Ajaeng masters Jongsun Park, Taebaek Lee, Byungchun Park, and Hanseung Kim.
An ajaeng player, Donghoon Kim is currently studying at the Korea National University of Arts under the guidance of Professor Sanghun Kim. He won first prize in the 2018 Dong-A Music Competition.
Hi-Kyung Kim has been described by the Washington Post as “a master of Asian and Western genre-blending.” She studied at Seoul National University and at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley she received the Ladd Prix de Paris, which enabled her to work at IRCAM and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (1988-1990). Her teachers include Andrew Imbrie, Olly Wilson, Gérard Grisey and Sung-Jae Lee. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is the founding director of the Pacific Rim Music Festival since 1996.
Her honors include from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Fromm Music Foundation, Meet the Composer/Commissioning USA, Arts Council Korea, Fulbright Senior Scholar awards, University of California Inter-Campus Arts Program, Asian Cultural Council and the Korea Foundation.
In the past two decades Kim has collaborated with number of Korean artists. These artists, internationally recognized for their contributions to Korean traditional music and art forms, have participated in several of Kim's compositions. Her projects have included three major multi-media works titled “Rituel” for Korean and Western ensembles and Korean dance. A new collaborative multi-disciplinary work, “Thousand Gates” for the Ensemble Rituel, was previewed at the Smithsonian Institution. Thousand Gates is now in preparation for its full presentation. Among her recent works, Kim has worked with the Borromeo String Quartet on several projects including completing an unfinished work of Andrew Imbrie’s Clarinet Quintet, commissioned by Harvard Musical Association and premiered by Richard Stolzman and Borromeo String Quartet. She also has enjoyed working on solo works for several instruments to explore the possible realms of instruments while she is exploring new works with the Korean traditional orchestras.
Hi Kyung Kim was a featured composer for Hún Qiáo [Bridge of Souls] project, presented by the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota with Yo-Yo Ma; Keynote speaker and a composer at the UNESCO 2nd World Conference on Arts Education; featured composer at the Korea Society of Woman Composers; Representing composer for the Third Generation at the Asia Society New York for the Four Generations of Asian Composers project. She was invited by the Korea National Gugak Center as a Fulbright senior scholar working with traditional orchestras.
Uzong Choe studied composition and music theory at Seoul National University, Mozarteum University Salzburg, and Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. Since 1994 he has worked with director Yoon-Taek Lee and his street theater troupe Yon-Hee Dan and has made compositions and arrangements. Since 2001 he has been a professor of composition and music theory at Seoul National University and has served as artistic director of Ensemble TIMF. His works have been performed at various festivals including Gaudeamus Muziekweek, ISCM World Music Days in Manchester, Contemporary Music Days in Bacau, festival Aspekte Salzburg, Festival Métamorphose au lac de Brienz, International Summer Course in Darmstadt, Asian-Pacific Weeks Berlin, and St. Gellert Festival in Szeged, etc. His compositions range across a wide variety of styles and aesthetic standpoints, from early music to pop music. His recent works especially reflect his research on European polyphony and Korean traditional music, showing a strong interest in music theater.
Jongwoo Yim studied with Prof. Sukhi Kang at the Seoul National University in Korea where he graduated in composition. He then moved to the Netherlands to study sonology at Institute of Sonology, the Hague Royal Conservatory, and studied composition with Klaas de Vries at Rotterdam Conservatory where he graduated with a diploma in composition. Afterwards, he studied ‘composition électroacoustique, informatique et instrumentale’ at the department of SONVS, Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Lyon in France, where he received the diploma DNESM. He was selected for the Cursus annuel 2001–2002 for composition and computer music at IRCAM in France. His works have been performed at several international music festivals such as Gaudeamus, Resonance, Agora, SICMF, ISCM World Music Day, ACL New Music Festival, Alea III, Festival Champs Libres, Faroese Art Festival, Festival Primavera Havana, EMW Athens and IEAMM Brazil. In 2014, he co-organized The 1st International IRCAM Forum Workshop in Seoul with IRCAM including the CREAMA & IRCAM concert. His works has been premiered through major institutions and by eminent musicians and ensembles at the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra Ars Nova concert, Nova Musica concert, CREAMA & IRCAM concert, Journées Grame, New Music Concert, Korean Composers Project, SICMF, Project21AND concert, Resonance Festival, and others. He was selected as a 2015 commissioned composer by the Ministry of Culture and Communication in France. Currently, he is a professor of graduate-level composition and electroacoustic music and director of CREAMA (Center for Research in Electroacoustic Music & Audio) at Hanyang University in Korea.