Five Traces is a wordless opera in three acts.
Its sound includes words and images. The notes must spea...
This wordless opera is certainly my most daring experiment with text in sound.

Over the ten years I spent discovering the majestic Geomungo, the six-string Korean bass zither played with a suldae plectrum, working on Héros de la pensée (2012/vol I) gave soft, poetic, melodious and appeasing sounds. Some of my studies continued the reduction process I had started for the piano and the violin (and then for the Gayageum), in the compositions I wrote between 1986 and 2023, attempts at extreme reducing and simplifying down to lines (vol I), music stated on one and single note (with exceptions). Lines allows the interpreter to express themselves within the scope of rhythm, nuance, vibratos, stresses and attacks, and to show the many unheard orchestral possibilities at the root of this unique instrument. In stark contrast,Chanson cubique (vol II) or Trace III include moments with an excessive variety of notes driving the instrument into a corner. With the warm timbres of the recordings featuring on the first two cd volumes, the listener is an accomplice to the interpreter, standing in the wings while they rub strings on fret, prepare their fingers and... more

TRACE I, LEE JUNGA, Geomungo
TRACE II, SHIN JIHEE, Geomungo
TRACE III, SUN CHAERIN, geomungo/PARK HANGYOR, Changgu
TRACE IV, KIM JOONYOUNG, geomungo/KIM INSOO, Changgu
TRACE V, LEE SUNHEE, Geomungo

Baudouin de Jaer
Composer, violonist, Baudouin de Jaer studied composition with Philippe Boesmans, Henri Pousseur, Frederic Rzewski and at McGill University (Montréal) with Bruce Mather. He composes for the Korean instruments Daegeum, Haegeum, Gayageum and Geomungo, and for orchestras of Korean traditional instruments. In 2010 he resolved the enigmatic music system of Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli and released a CD called 'The He.......
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