Classical music festival to fill DMZ with peace, harmonies and hope

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Classical music festival to fill DMZ with peace, harmonies and hope

Published: 02 Oct. 2024, 14:04

SHIN MIN-HEE
shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr

From left: The DMZ OPEN International Music Festival's organizing committee chairman Choe Jae-chun, violinist Dmytro Udovychenko and artistic director Im Mi-jung pose during a press conference on Monday. [DMZ OPEN INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL]

Throughout October and November, Korea’s demilitarized zone, otherwise known as the DMZ, will be filled with the harmonies of classical music concerts.

The DMZ OPEN International Music Festival, in its second edition, is set to kick off from Nov. 9 to 16, filled with eight performances at the Goyang AramNuri Arts Center’s Aram Concert Hall.

“My work has always been deeply involved with the DMZ, but it’s also been an important task to figure out how we were going to share this area with the rest of the nation,” said Choe Jae-chun, biologist and ecology professor at Ewha Womans University, in a press conference on Monday. Choe is the chairman of the festival’s organizing committee.

“And we felt that the best way was to use the power of art.”

The festival was founded based on the mission that the DMZ would be revamped into a place of hope and peace to move past its dark past as the border barrier that has divided the two Koreas for over half a century, according to pianist Im Mi-jung, the festival’s artistic director this year.

She learned upon a trip to North Korea some years ago that classical music by Russian composers was popular there. “I realized that this genre could be something that could connect the two Koreas.”

The first concert of the music festival kicks off on Nov. 9 at 5 p.m., titled “A Beginning Long Underway,” featuring pianist Paik Kun-woo, conductor Leos Svarovsky and the KBS Symphony Orchestra. Performers will play a 1976 rearrangement of the famous Korean folk song “Arirang,” Scriabin’s “Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, Op. 20” and Dvorak’s “Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88, B. 163.”

The DMZ OPEN Festival Orchestra, Li Biao Percussion Group, violinist Dmytro Udovychenko, pianist Bae Jin-woo and soprano Hera Hyesang Park are among dozens of participating musicians for the eight concerts.

Before that, starting Oct. 5 and every week until Nov. 11, is a series of concerts on the festival’s sidelines, which will take place at an ammunition depot at Camp Greaves, a former U.S. army base that now serves as a public cultural complex.

The Arete Quartet [DMZ OPEN INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL]

Each show stars performers who have won accolades at international competitions, like the Arete Quartet at the 19th Lyon International Chamber Music Competition and the Risus Quartet at the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition 2023.

More information on the schedule can be found on the music festival’s website.

The DMZ OPEN International Music Festival is part of the ongoing DMZ OPEN Festival, which started in May. The festival is filled with events like music performances, exhibitions, forums and marathons that aim to make the DMZ more culturally accessible to the public.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]