Park Jiha: Communion

“Communion” is Park Jiha’s first album, originally released in on November 6, 2016, but performed at EMPAC on September 25, 2018. It’s this live performance that I will be reviewing, having never listened to the album before.

The performance started out not with an address from Park Jiha, but with a short foreword from Johannes Goebel, the director of EMPAC. He spoke about how the quartet of performers had flown here all the way from Korea and weren’t staying long, and that this kind of performance was quite special, even for EMPAC. Regardless of whether he was actively trying to hype up the audience, I will admit that I was quite hyped by his speech. I, personally, was sitting far up in the back; I was far enough away from the stage that I regret not sitting closer.

On stage, Park Jiha herself sits front and center. Supporting Park Jiha and positioned around her are Chris Varga (vibraphone), Kim Oki, (saxophone and bass clarinet), and Jeon Jekon (double bass). Park herself switches between many instruments throughout the performance: piri, a loud, shrill bamboo flute that sounds a bit like a cross between a kazoo and a high-pitched saxophone; yanggeum, an ornate hammered dulcimer with a bridge that splits the strings asymmetrically; saenghwang, a large Korean mouth organ, visually evocative of the bamboo from which it’s made. She does also sing, but only in the last motion.

After the second motion, Park Jiha took a break from the music to address us in the audience and gave us some background information about the event. She shared the names and backgrounds of the people performing with her, and also the names of the instruments she plays. Additionally, she shares her goal: with “Communion,” she sought to push the boundaries of traditional Korean music by adding decidedly non-traditional instruments.

The lead in each motion is unmistakably Park Jiha, save for the first half of the first motion, which introduced the supporting members one by one before she begun to play. This leads to perhaps the only major criticism I can pose, more of the sound arrangement of the event than the music itself. In this first motion, when Park Jiha finally began to play, she played the piri. My problem was that, when Park Jiha started playing, her instrument was so much louder than the others that I found the difference between the volume of her instrument and the supporting instruments overwhelming. Later on, I didn’t get this impression, but I’m not sure if it was because the audio balance was changed on the fly or because I just got used to the loud volume. Perhaps it was by design and meant as an element of surprise, but I’m not very good with sudden, shrill noises.

Beyond that, however, I liked the event quite a bit. Having never listened to “Communion” before, I found myself thinking that the instruments Park Jiha used at a given time were similar in function to that of a lead singer; this gave me the feeling that each song was like a wordless story.

The Korean instruments were also fascinating; I had never seen them before, and I found myself enjoying mentally comparing them to other sounds I heard before. In particular, the yanggeum, when played, sounded almost like it was both a lead and a supporting instrument. A string struck to the left of the bridge sounded subtly different than when struck to the right, and I couldn’t tell if that was inherent to the instrument or if it was Park Jiha’s mastery at play. Regardless, the yanggeum gave any piece it was used in a feel and sense of adventure and progression, like that of a story, and I thoroughly enjoyed that.

 In conclusion, though I haven’t gone to many concerts at EMPAC or elsewhere, I did enjoy “Communion.” If you have the chance, give the album a listen – it’s unlikely you’ve heard very much quite like it.