Sori-Mori-Nori (2024)
Duration: 11 minutes
Instrumentation: Gugak (Korean folk music) orchestra with solo soribuk player
Commissioner: Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra
Performance History
11/29/2024 Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Orchestra w/ Sori Choi (soribuk) & Soo-Yeoul Choi (cond), Seoul, South Korea
Program Notes
Life comes from heartbeats. Those of our mothers that we heard before we were born became those of ours. Along with the sound of our breath, heartbeats are always around us and enable our musical pre-understanding. Drums, especially Korean ones, including jeolgo, jwago, janggu, and buk, create low and resonant beats that can remind us of heartbeats, which the piece, "Sori-Nori-Mori" incorporates. At the beginning of the piece, the soribuk player plays a role in giving life to the orchestra. Then, the music exhibits various relationships between the soloist and the orchestra in somewhat abstract ways.
The first part of the piece's title, Sori, is derived from the Korean word meaning "sound," which is one of the important considerations in composing this work, given that the name of the soloist's instrument is soribuk, and that of the soloist who premiered the piece is Sori(!). Mori is a suffix added to various Gugak (Korean traditional music) jangdans (rhythmic patterns), but it could also be translated into "to herd" or "to rush," both of which I tried to capture in the middle part of the piece. Nori is a play or game, which this piece might feel toward the end of the piece. I hope the audience can experience these layers of my thoughts incarnated as music.
Instrumentation: Gugak (Korean folk music) orchestra with solo soribuk player
Commissioner: Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra
Performance History
11/29/2024 Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Orchestra w/ Sori Choi (soribuk) & Soo-Yeoul Choi (cond), Seoul, South Korea
Program Notes
Life comes from heartbeats. Those of our mothers that we heard before we were born became those of ours. Along with the sound of our breath, heartbeats are always around us and enable our musical pre-understanding. Drums, especially Korean ones, including jeolgo, jwago, janggu, and buk, create low and resonant beats that can remind us of heartbeats, which the piece, "Sori-Nori-Mori" incorporates. At the beginning of the piece, the soribuk player plays a role in giving life to the orchestra. Then, the music exhibits various relationships between the soloist and the orchestra in somewhat abstract ways.
The first part of the piece's title, Sori, is derived from the Korean word meaning "sound," which is one of the important considerations in composing this work, given that the name of the soloist's instrument is soribuk, and that of the soloist who premiered the piece is Sori(!). Mori is a suffix added to various Gugak (Korean traditional music) jangdans (rhythmic patterns), but it could also be translated into "to herd" or "to rush," both of which I tried to capture in the middle part of the piece. Nori is a play or game, which this piece might feel toward the end of the piece. I hope the audience can experience these layers of my thoughts incarnated as music.