“Even with complimentary tickets, they did not come”···Korean traditional orchestra that kept transforming to find audiences, a rousing 50-year survival story - 경향신문

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Samulnori master Kim Deok-su and gugak conductor Park Cheon-ji, a professor at Dongguk University, pose at the National Theater on the 7th ahead of an interview with the Kyunghyang Shinmun. Jeong Ji-yun, senior staff reporter

Korean traditional orchestral music, performed by large ensembles of many traditional instruments. It is a concert format that is not unfamiliar to the public as a way to encounter traditional music, yet its history is not long. Western harmony and large-scale orchestration were layered onto Korean music, which had centered on monophony, jangdan rhythmic cycles, and improvisatory breath, only after the mid-20th century. Having set out in the unfamiliar garb of the Western orchestra, Korean traditional orchestral music has, over the past half century, written an original survival story through collisions and experiments.

On the 18th, at the National Theater in Jung-gu, Seoul, the National Gugak Orchestra's Orchestra Series Ⅰ <Chronicle of Collaborations> traces that trajectory with five concerto-style works emblematic of each era from the 1970s to the 2020s.

On the 7th, amid busy preparations, conductor Park Cheon-ji (professor in the Department of Korean Music at Dongguk University), who will lead the performance, and samulnori master Kim Deok-su met at the National Theater. Beginning in 1957 at age five as a saemi in the Namsadang troupe and set to mark 70 years on stage next year, Kim is a living witness who helped popularize gugak, while Park, a former percussionist with the National Gugak Orchestra and former principal conductor of the Jeonju City Gugak Orchestra, moves between composition and conducting to shape the present and future of Korean traditional orchestral music.

“After the founding of the Seoul Metropolitan Gugak Orchestra in 1965, original works for large-scale gugak orchestra began to appear, and in the 1970s concertos that put traditional instruments forward as soloists came fully to the fore. The daegeum concerto ‘Daebaramsori’ is a representative work.”

Conductor Park points to ‘Daebaramsori’ (1978) by composer Lee Sang-gyu as the starting point of gugak collaborations. Combining the court-music-like tone of the daegeum with orchestra, this piece opens the program.

Samulnori master Kim Deok-su poses at the National Theater on the 7th ahead of an interview with the Kyunghyang Shinmun. 2026.9.7. Jeong Ji-yun, senior staff reporter

The 1980s were when gugak collaborations entered the mainstream. After Kim Deok-su introduced the performance format of samulnori to the world in 1978, unconventional concertos that brought percussion together with orchestra followed in succession, such as ‘Madang’ (1983) and ‘Sinmodeum’ (1986). Behind this was the urgent sense among gugak musicians that they needed to go find audiences.

“There was a time when audiences would not come to gugak concerts even if you handed out invitation tickets.” Kim said with a laugh. It was an era when tickets for Western classical concerts sold for hundreds of thousands of won. “To meet audiences, we had to do concertos, that is, collaborations. We decided to step directly onto stages where the audiences already were.”

When newly composed gugak still felt unfamiliar, the meeting of gugak and the Western orchestra was both an experiment in creating new sounds and a challenge to break down the walls of the existing music world. There was even a time when a planned performance with the KBS Symphony Orchestra of a new work using shamanic jangdan could not go on stage because rehearsals did not take place.

The work that changed the game was Park Beom-hoon's samulnori concerto ‘Sinmodeum’. Whereas earlier gugak-orchestral pieces mainly used familiar jangdan such as jinyangjo, jungmori, and gutgeori, ‘Sinmodeum’ drew in the varied rhythms of pungmul and nongak from all eight provinces, imprinting a new allure. Audiences were exhilarated by the dynamic sinmyeong generated by the gugak orchestra and samulnori, and ‘Sinmodeum’ secured its place as a core repertoire piece for gugak orchestra. Kim called it “a revolutionary turning point in creating the ensemble of samulnori and orchestra,” and Park said, “It is a work that changed the paradigm of the gugak orchestra. From then on, the very way of writing pieces changed.”

Saenghwang player Kim Hyo-young, who collaborates with the National Gugak Orchestra in composer Lee Jun-ho's saenghwang concerto ‘Pung-hyang’ (1997) in this program. Courtesy of the National Theater

Change accelerated thereafter. As instrument improvements advanced, less familiar instruments such as the saenghwang rose as solo instruments, and since the 2000s, compositions that deconstructed and recombined traditional jangdan and melody have emerged. The sanjo gayageum concerto ‘Scattered Rhythms’ (2016) by American composer Donald Womack, included in this program, sits within that current.

It is no longer unusual to see Western instruments on a gugak-orchestral stage. In the final piece, the cello concerto ‘Miso’ (2022) by Choi Ji-hye, cellist Hong Jin-ho appears as the collaborating soloist.

Gugak conductor Park Cheon-ji, a professor at Dongguk University, poses at the National Theater on the 7th ahead of an interview with the Kyunghyang Shinmun. 2026.9.7. Jeong Ji-yun, senior staff reporter

Over the past half century, the history of gugak has been a journey of continuously embracing the unfamiliar and expanding its reach. Most recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has also joined as a partner. In June, the National Gugak Orchestra presented the orchestral concert <Coexistence> in collaboration with the AI composer “Jieum”. Kim emphasizes that, no matter how constant the fusion and change, the essence of our music lies in the jangdan.

“A Western orchestra divides time into bars, but our music rolls forward on the breathing of jangdan that lives and moves as if speaking. Take the Ochaegilgut rhythm from Jeolla in ‘Sinmodeum’ alone: it is a composite rhythm where three and two interlock. If you mechanically slice this into Western-style simple triple meter, all of our unique flavor dies.”

Conductor Park likewise noted, “The conducting techniques of a Western orchestra and a gugak orchestra are not inherently different. The core is how fully the conductor has embodied our jangdan and breath.”

“Our music absorbs countless jangdan from shamanic music, court music, pungmul, folk songs, and more. What matters is how much you hold those as your nourishment.” In Kim's words, “In a word, you have to become a gwishin.” Only when the conductor, the orchestra, and the soloist have internalized that jangdan feel does the true flavor emerge.

Kim stressed, “Just as you cannot pass off Japanese-style miso soup as traditional Korean doenjang soup, even if the shell of the music changes, the roots of ‘jangdan’ and ‘sinmyeong’the DNA of our peoplemust be alive for it to be true Korean music.”

Park added, “Collaboration across genre boundaries is a welcome change, but there must be thought about why you use a given instrument and jangdan. Simply layering the sound of a gugak instrument does not automatically create new gugak.”

Finally, Park offered advice to audiences coming to this stage on how to enjoy the concert.

“This performance is a stage that shows how gugak has broken walls and evolved over the past 50 years. I recommend listening once in advance to the original recordings or to the stories behind the concertos. You will feel a completely new kind of emotion.”