Hilgeum are rising stars in Korea. Playing their own compositions on traditional instruments, they are known for emotionally resonant, intricately layered music that looks to both past and future.
The trio were in London as part of the K-Music Festival, a showcase that takes audiences beyond the super-successful K-Pop formula to explore a broader range of Korean music. This year’s festival is all about pushing boundaries of genre and form, and an important element is creating new collaborations. One of these saw Hilgeum paired with the British-Polish singer, musician and composer Alice Zawadski.
Hilgeum first played with Zawadski in August at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, and the UK debut proved to be an engaging cross-cultural recital. Hilgeum took the stage first, playing a few of their own compositions, including the haunting Escape, about escaping your own shadow.
Hilgeum: a contemporary approach to traditional Korean instruments
Yoin Cho was on gayageum (a 12-string zither), Yerim Kim on geomungo (a six-string zither) and Somin Park on haegeum (a two-string fiddle).
It was fascinating to see these traditional instruments played with skill and passion in a small recital hall. The gayageum, geomungo and haegeum each have their own unique timbres. The bold lighting on stage really highlighted the players and created a sense of drama and their individual techniques were inspiring to watch.
Alice Zawadski then played a standalone set of her own ethereal pieces, singing and playing the violin. The recital concluded with a collaborative set of pieces they worked on when they met in Korea, including Gathering, described as a musical prayer for the modern world.
The final piece, Butterflies, was a delightful blend of compositions by both Hilgeum and Zawadski, and a lovely example of a shared musical understanding. It was an intimate recital that showed music really is a universal language. The audience certainly responded warmly to the performers and their heartfelt music-making.
Hilgeum and Alice Zawadski performed in London as part of the K-Music Festival on 18 October. The festival continues to 20 November.
Also on ArtsHub: MUSIK review: Billie Trix is brash, bad and beautiful
Almost 25 years ago, Frances Barber starred as Billie Trix in the musical Closer to Heaven written by Jonathan Harvey together with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys. Barber was such a star as Billie that six years ago, the spin-off solo show MUSIK was unleashed at the Edinburgh Fringe. It was a huge hit, having a sell-out season and acquiring a legion of devoted fans.
Now, MUSIK is back in London for a short run at the wonderful Wilton’s Music Hall. It’s a divine shabby-chic venue, the oldest grand music hall in the world, and it’s a perfect setting for Billie’s musical-memoir of a life lived in the maelstrom of celebrity. Like the building itself, Billie shows more than a few signs of age but she’s not dead yet.
In MUSIK, it’s a miracle in itself that Billie Trix is still standing. ‘Born at the edge of hell’ and originally named Hildegard, Billie is dishevelled, angry, unrepentant and snorting large quantities of cocaine, which she washes down with Jack Daniels, neat, usually straight from the bottle. She was her mother’s ‘one regret’ – a ‘little mongrel’ born in war-torn Berlin.
There is more than a touch of Berlin Kabaret here, with Barber delivering an acerbic monologue with Germanic vocal inflections. The performance delivers a piercing take on celebrity and pop culture. In Billie’s telling of her life story, she was Madonna’s muse (‘the bitch stole my look’), gave Andy Warhol the inspiration for his first soup can, and was the creative force behind artists Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. She was even responsible for Covid escaping from Wuhan.
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