Sookmyung Gayageum Orchestra has been known as a pioneer who created new ways to communicate with audiences in field of Korean traditional music. Sookmyung Gayageum Orchestra was founded in 1999, by a group of students in the Korean traditional music program at the graduates school of Cultural Heritage Sookmyung Women’s University. The appearance of Sookmyung Gayageum Orchestra raised quick attention from the public as it was the first musical group of its kind in the world of Korean traditional music. Since its inception, Sookmyung Gayageum Orchestra has made its great efforts to transmit various kinds of music in the beautiful harmony of gayageum ensemble. Sookmyung Gayageum Orchestra’s performance repertoire covers from western classical music such as Vivaldi’s Four Season, South American folk songs, Russian popular songs to Beatle’s git songs like ‘Let it be’, Hey Jude’, ‘Yellow Submarine’ etc, not to mention the high level of original Korean traditional music pieces. Sookmyung Gayageum Orchestra’s work quikly won much attraction from both young and old audiences, and led to bus performance schedule around the year. The recent CF for cable TV and movie theaters that Sookmyung appeared with B-boy, ‘Last for one’, has proved Sookmyung’s high acclaim from the public.
By 2005, Sookmyung Gayageum Orchestra had presented 7 regular concert and many invitational concerts hosed by such as KBS Traditional, EBS TV, Special Concerts for Korea Airlines, World Women’s Congress 2004, and Busan APEC CEO Summit 2005 and so forth. They have released five music records including “Gaya Song”
(2002), “New World of Gayageum ? Let it Be”
(2003) “Oriental mood of Gayageum”
(2005) and “Lovely Gayageum”
(2006), and Korean’s Best Favorite Gayageum Melodies “For You”
(2006) etc. Among them, especially, the 3rd volume CD titled “New World of Gayageum” was loved by a wide range of audiences and once on the best seller list in the field of Korean traditional music records market.
For the year 2006, Sookmyung has an ambitious plan to continue this development, including a tour of Sakhalin, Russia and Turkey, giving new type of concerts for Gayageum and Haegeum ensemble, for new interpretation of court music, called Jung-ak, which was enjoyed by scholars during Joseon period. Sookmyung has also a plan to introduce new music pieces for Gayageum Beongchang, a type of gayageum performance which accompanies vocal. Sookmyung now employs about 30 players and runs several small performing groups depending on the specific type of repertoire and stage.
