Orchestra member contracted the virus after teaching student related to church infection cluster

Pianist Son Yeol-eum looks back on MPyC experience

The Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra will hold a special concert on Saturday at the outdoor stage of Seodaemun Prison History Hall, western Seoul, in celebration of the 75th anniversary of Liberation Day. Every year, the SPO, funded by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, holds a commemorative concert celebrating the day at iconic locations across Seoul such as the Sejong Center of Performing Arts, Seoul Plaza and Gwanghwamun Plaza. This year, the concert will be held at the Seodaemun Prison Histo

Summer music festival wraps up three-week run amid heavy downpour

Hip-pop artist Simon Dominic will be performing in the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts’ Sejong Grand Theater in central Seoul on Sept. 8. The Sejong Center for the Performing Arts said it was special for a hip-pop artist to perform at the center, which usually holds classical music performances. “Rapper Beenzino once performed in our concert hall as a guest singer, but other than that, no other hip-hop artist has performed at the Sejong Center,” the center said in a s

The 14th Grand Mint Festival will take place at Olympic Park, eastern Seoul, on Oct. 24 and 25 with a limited audience due to the spread of COVID-19. The festival organizers said they will sell less than half of the tickets sold in previous years. Last year around 40,000 tickets were sold. There will be no standing room entrance. Attendees will be able to enjoy the festival in the picnic zone apart from each other to comply with social distancing guidelines. The organizers added that they

The 2020 Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival will take place Oct. 16-17 at Songdo Pentaport Park, the city of Incheon announced on Wednesday. The festival will take place both on and offline, with performances streamed live for the first time in the festival‘s history. While the festival was held for three days in August in previous years, it has been pushed back to October this year with a shortend two-day schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 15th edition of the annual festival aims

The “Mr. Trot” Seoul concert, featuring top contestants from TV Chosun’s record-breaking program, has been rescheduled to Aug. 7 to 23, after the local government relaxed regulations on large-scale concerts Friday. The concert has been delayed four times due to the spread of COVID-19 and restrictions made by the Songpa-gu Office, which oversees Olympic Gymnastics Arena where the concert is scheduled to take place. Show Play, the concert organizer, announced that the audience

Blind violinist Kim Ji-sun is set for a new page of her life with plans across the Pacific region. Kim will attend the Manhattan School of Music in New York next year for graduate studies. She will be the first blind person to enter the two-year graduate program at the college. “The program was to begin in September, but has been delayed to January because of the coronavirus pandemic situation,” Kim told The Korea Herald in a phone interview Monday. “But still, I am excite

It’s coming three months later than planned, but the 19th Uijeongbu Music Theatre Festival will be held with live audiences from Aug. 7-16 in the Gyeonggi Province city. The in-person performing arts festival will take place at Uijeongbu Arts Center and other cultural facilities in Uijeongbu, just northeast of Seoul. Originally slated to take place in May, the UMTF was postponed twice due to the spread of COVID-19. The festival will introduce 11 indoor and 24 outdoor shows, marking a t

The 2020 PLZ Festival kicked off Saturday near the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas, in hopes of bringing peace in the Korean Peninsula. Standing for “Peace and Life Zone Festival,” it is the sole international music festival held at the DMZ. This year marks the second year for the festival, held under the theme “The Sound Within the Sound!” The festival is being held in five counties in Gangwon Province close to the DMZ, including Inje, Yanggu, Hwach

SPO conductor looks back on 2020 Mahler Competition, tortuous trip to Germany

The much-anticipated “Mr. Trot” tour, scheduled to start Friday at the Olympic Gymnastics Arena in Seoul and continue nationwide, has been delayed yet again after the local government banned concerts to crowds of over 5,000. TV Chosun’s “Mr. Trot,” an audition program that chose the best trot singer out of 100 contestants, posted record viewership ratings when it aired from January to March this year. Attesting to its popularity across generations, tickets to the

The curtain went up on the 17th Music in PyeongChang festival Wednesday, kicking off three weeks of concerts. The biannual classical music festival, organized by the Gangwon Arts & Culture Foundation, will be held across Gangwon Province until Aug. 8. This year, the festival is titled “Must it be? It must be!” paying homage to Beethoven. Like many other music festivals this year, the summer event celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of the composer. On Wednesday,

The National Gugak Center recently published the second edition of English-language e-book “Traditional Korean Instruments: A Practical Guide for Composers,” aiming to introduce gugak, traditional Korean music, instruments to foreign composers. The first edition of the guide, containing information about gayageum, geomungo, daegeum, piri, haegeum and ajaeng, was published in 2018. The new e-book, written by gugak musicians and scholars, was published in Korean last year. An Englis