The concert at the temple was a wild experience in all ways-- not least since I was playing the banjo on the biggest stage I have ever played on, in front of the largest crowd I have ever played for (over two hundred), in front of one of the largest bronze Buddhas in Asia. Hard to beat that experience.
The Buddha statue was as impressive as it sounds. The temple complex is embedded in Taejo mountain and the whole setting was really breathtaking.
Here are a couple of pictures of the Buddha which give a good idea of the size of the statue.
Here is me and the Buddha during the afternoon. I spent the afternoon sitting in one of the temple buildings playing with the haegum player, Ji Yoon Chun, it was a lot of fun, she was a fine musician and the haegum is a strange and beautiful instrument. It is raspy and fits well with a punchy banjo. Korean traditional music has a whole different style of structure in playing the tunes with different instruments. In addition to playing the tune, it is common to have tempo shifts, improvisation, and other techniques which made the experience an interesting challenge (much harder thab just learning the tunes, which are pretty straight forward and not terribly unlike American folk tunes).
The whole temple complex is as stunning as are virtually all Korean Buddhist temples.
Here is the temple choir going up the stairs. They opened the concert.
The other bands were all large, loud, and multi-piece bands, including Korean fusion bands, a Hong Kong drumming band, some hard to define bands. The concert was ended by a singer named Sang Eun Lee, who is actually a large star in Korea with something like 12 albums.
Yes, it did occur to me that it was unusual for me to be there playing old time tunes...
Interesting that the monks at the Gukwan temple were so interested in having a concert. Some music professors from SangMyung University and a promoter in Seoul actually set the thing up, but it was driven initially by the interests of the monks. They all sat up front during the show and clapped while I played. One of the promoters told me that they had never heard the banjo and really liked it.
In the show I played a couple of songs with a great haegum player, and those tunes were received really well since we played the most popular folk songs in Korea--"Doragi" and "Arirang". Everybody knows these songs, and the audience sang along, it was fun. A friend of mine shot some video of it and some much better pictures which i will post when I get it. Here are the pictures I have at the momment of us playing on stage. If you look carefully you can just see the lit Buddha statue behind Ji Yoon.
It was an honor to have had the opportunity to play a show for Buddha's birthday and definitely not something I had expected ever to do. Overall, a rare and wonderful experience.
The Buddha statue was as impressive as it sounds. The temple complex is embedded in Taejo mountain and the whole setting was really breathtaking.
Here are a couple of pictures of the Buddha which give a good idea of the size of the statue.
Here is me and the Buddha during the afternoon. I spent the afternoon sitting in one of the temple buildings playing with the haegum player, Ji Yoon Chun, it was a lot of fun, she was a fine musician and the haegum is a strange and beautiful instrument. It is raspy and fits well with a punchy banjo. Korean traditional music has a whole different style of structure in playing the tunes with different instruments. In addition to playing the tune, it is common to have tempo shifts, improvisation, and other techniques which made the experience an interesting challenge (much harder thab just learning the tunes, which are pretty straight forward and not terribly unlike American folk tunes).
The whole temple complex is as stunning as are virtually all Korean Buddhist temples.
Here is the temple choir going up the stairs. They opened the concert.
The other bands were all large, loud, and multi-piece bands, including Korean fusion bands, a Hong Kong drumming band, some hard to define bands. The concert was ended by a singer named Sang Eun Lee, who is actually a large star in Korea with something like 12 albums.
Yes, it did occur to me that it was unusual for me to be there playing old time tunes...
Interesting that the monks at the Gukwan temple were so interested in having a concert. Some music professors from SangMyung University and a promoter in Seoul actually set the thing up, but it was driven initially by the interests of the monks. They all sat up front during the show and clapped while I played. One of the promoters told me that they had never heard the banjo and really liked it.
In the show I played a couple of songs with a great haegum player, and those tunes were received really well since we played the most popular folk songs in Korea--"Doragi" and "Arirang". Everybody knows these songs, and the audience sang along, it was fun. A friend of mine shot some video of it and some much better pictures which i will post when I get it. Here are the pictures I have at the momment of us playing on stage. If you look carefully you can just see the lit Buddha statue behind Ji Yoon.
It was an honor to have had the opportunity to play a show for Buddha's birthday and definitely not something I had expected ever to do. Overall, a rare and wonderful experience.
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