PAN project
The word ‘Pan’ in the ensemble’s name is taken from the Korean music-storytelling tradition ‘pansori’ and means to gather or come together. In this sense PAN Project is about coming together and telling stories through music and performance.
PAN Project was co-founded and is co-artistic directed by Korean piri master gamin and American composer-performer Jeff Roberts.
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Album Introduction
This inaugural album by PAN Project Ensemble explores the rich intercultural history of East Asian Music through improvisation. Chinese, Korean and Japanese music traditions are bonded deep historical intercultural interactions beginning over 1500 years ago, and over time each forging their own unique music traditions, integrating both foreign and domestic music elements. The repertoire on this album is drawn from a wide variety of genres that reflect the diversity of this historical intercultural integration, including Korean and Chinese folk song (Kangwon Arirang, Si Xiang Qi), Korean folk rhythm related to shaman ritual music (Gutgeori), Chinese music for spiritual self-cultivation (Yi Gu Ren), Korean drama/storytelling (Sugungga) and a composition influenced by Western Jazz (Bell Rings Deep Blue). There are two aspects of PAN Project ensemble and the musical direction explored on this album that can be called ‘intercultural experimentation’. First is the intercultural instrumentation. With the exception of the Korean instruments piri, saenghwang, janggu & buk, none of these instruments traditionally play together, not even the Chinese instruments guqin and erhu. This intercultural instrumentation opens up an entirely new space for the exploration of new combinations of timbre and sonority. Second, while some of these pieces have connections to open-ended improvisation, others do not. Exploring repertoire not traditionally improvised alongside improvised repertoire also opens up space to experiment with music and traditions deeply set in history (going back hundreds to thousands of years) and discover new and innovative ways to develop these musics in the modern day.
