The 12th edition of Ballet Festival Korea will be held with 26 performances in June, the organizing committee said Tuesday, with Seoul Arts Center as the co-organizer. Under the theme of “Open Up the New Ordinary Days,” the festival will showcase old and new ballet productions by both established and emerging dancers from June 9-29. Some of the highlights include the opening performance, “Ahn J...

Gurzenich Orchester Koln will be performing in South Korea for the first time in five years, this time with violinist Clara-Jumi Kang as the soloist, according to production company Vincero. Led by conductor Francois-Xavier Roth who has helmed the orchestra since 2015, the 195-year-old orchestra will perform at Seoul Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. on July 8. Outside of Seoul, the team will bring the s...

On Thursday and Friday, beloved violist Richard Yongjae O’Neill performed with his usual gusto for Korean audiences. Under the baton of music director and conductor Osmo Vanska, O’Neill and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra performed Sibelius’ Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63. What made these concerts particularly significant was his rendition of Paul Chihara’s “Concerto for Viola and Orchestra...

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Arts & Culture Education Service announced that they will hold the 11th International Arts Education Week next week. Under the theme of “Culture and Arts Education in the Post-Coronavirus Era, Resilience to Transformation,” the one-week event will showcase various programs including a symposium and seminar on culture and arts education, a one...

“Using the sijo form is an act that demonstrates my respect and heartfelt desire to engage with Korea’s astonishing history and culture. The syllabic constraints in a Korean sijo are not followed in my English-language “sijo/stlings”; but I have tried to remain faithful to the rhetorical structure of the sijo (theme to expansion to counter-theme, then resolution),” Disney said via e-mail on Wedne...

However, such resistance may dissipate during the famous tennis scene. In the second half of the musical, L faces off against Light in a dynamic tennis match. The scene is brought to life through the creative use of an inclined LED floor, which morphs to represent the varying perspectives that each character sees during the match. While the floor displays an entire uninterrupted tennis court wh...

Bunhwangsa, a Korean Buddhist temple, will open in Bodh Gaya, India on Saturday with a delegation of 150 Korean Buddhists from the Jogye Order – South Korea’s largest Buddhist sect -- attending the opening ceremony. Bodh Gaya in northeastern India’s Bihar state is one of Buddhism’s four holiest sites. It is where Sakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment under a Bodhi tree according to Buddhist te...

The 19th edition of Music in PyeongChang is set to take place earlier and will be bigger than before, the festival’s artistic director Son Yeol-eum said Monday. The iconic music festival will be held for 22 days from July 2 to 23 at various places in Gangwon Province under the theme of “Mask.” “Because of the masks during the pandemic, we were able to stay connected during a time of disconnecti...

The much-anticipated recitals in South Korea by Maurizio Pollini, considered one of the world’s leading pianists, have been canceled due to health reasons, the event organizer said on Thursday. Event organizer Mast Media cited chronic bronchitis as the reason for the 80-year-old musician’s abrupt cancellation of the recitals, titled “The Emperor of Piano: ‘Once in a Lifetime’” scheduled for May ...

Even though he won’t be recording for a while, he expects an even more packed scheduled as he looks forward to growing as a conductor in the next five years. The pianist made a formal debut as a conductor with the KBS Symphony Orchestra in January 2021. In October 2021, he made his European conducting debut with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. He will take the baton for several orchestras th...

In July, Grammy-award winning violinist Hilary Hahn and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra are set to perform across South Korea. Hahn, a three-time winner at the Grammys, will collaborate with the orchestra on July 6, 7, and 8 to present Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.1 in D major, Op. 19 in Seoul, Daegu and Tongyeong, respectively. The program for the three concerts also includes Mahler’s Symphon...

For the last four years, Park Hye-sang, an emerging South Korean soprano, has lived as a cultural nomad, bouncing between New York, Berlin and Seoul to further her career as an opera singer. The first four months of this year alone were a whirlwind of concerts and long-haul flights for Park. In January, she was in New York to perform Pamina in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” with the Metropolitan Ope...

A total of 12 Intangible Cultural Heritage Masters and dozens of educators gathered Wednesday in southeast Seoul to protest a newly proposed school curriculum, calling it a “massacre of gugak.” Gugak refers to Korean traditional music in Korean. Led by Lee Young-hee, 83, Intangible Cultural Heritage Master of Gayageum Sanjo and Byeongchang, the group condemned an ongoing research project led by...

From introducing forgotten female composers to crossing over beyond classical music into K-culture, the Korean National Symphony Orchestra unveiled plans to impress its name on the minds of music lovers at home and abroad. The orchestra’s artistic director David Reiland introduced various artistic plans and initiatives to reporters during a press conference at Seoul Arts Center on Tuesday. Reila...

For instance, Min explains that people can’t help but to bump into others in overcrowded Korean cities. Koreans think that this is inevitable, and no one seems to mind at all unless the contact really hurts. On the other hand, Americans might find it unpleasant, since they are accustomed to maintaining personal space in public places. The book also describes Korean cultural attributes that seem ...