40-year performer plans Arts Institute in Hwaseong

A pop singer with a 40-year career has announced a plan to help raise the bar on the Korean pop music industry.
Cho Yong-pil, 58, will open the YPC (Yong-pil Cho) Arts Institute, a fully-equipped facility for concert rehearsals, and host a Korea Music Festival.
“I want to improve the quality of Korean concerts,” the pop singer said last Tuesday in Seoul.
“I want to give younger singers a place to practice.”
The practice facility will open in January in Hwaseong, southern Gyeonggi, where Cho was born.
The YPC complex will cover 1,322 square meters (14,200 square feet) with a state-of-the-art recording studio, lighting and a computer room.
The plan is to link two five-story sets, so the theater can also be used for staging operas and musicals.
“Conventionally, rehearsals for concerts only took place right before the actual show,” Cho said.
“I figured the convention had to be broken. That’s why the arts institute will be erected.”
Cho says the center is one of his life-long dreams.
The singer has scheduled his 40th anniversary concert tour at various arenas.
Cho already has 19 concerts scheduled at Olympic stadium in Jamsil, the World Cup stadium in Sangam and other large venues. All told, more than 50 concerts are slated, with an expected attendance of 600,000.
The stage for the 40th anniversary tour will be 70 meters (230 feet) high and will wrap around the auditoriums.
Three-dimensional video and sound are part of the production, which will cost about 8 billion won ($8.7 million).
“I am almost having brain cramps coming up with ideas for the concert and the stage,” Cho said.
“This will be the show of my life, maybe the biggest. It may get listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.”
Concerts in New York, Los Angeles and Washington are scheduled for the coming year. The New York venue will be Radio City Music Hall, and Cho will be one of the few Asian singer to perform there.
The Korea Music Festival may be held at the landfill in Hwaseong, where Cho held his homecoming concert last month.
The first festival is tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2009.
Cho is also preparing his 19th album.
And he is grateful for the longevity of his career.
“I am just happy that I can be a singer on stage at this age.”

By Jung Hyun-mok JoongAng Ilbo [yhwang@joongang.co.kr]