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Sungjae Son

The Near East Quartet has been a force in Korean music since 2010, juxtaposing elements of contemporary jazz and traditional Korean music with pure sound exploration to create new forms. Saxophonist/clarinettist Sungjae Son and guitarist Suwuk Chung have been members from the outset, and the group has been strengthened with the integration of pansori singer Yulhee Kim and highly creative drummer Soojin Suh. On their ECM debut the NEQ plays five compositions by Sungjae Son and three Korean traditionals. Near East Quartet was recorded in Seoul, and mixed at Studios La Buissonne. Producer: Sun Chung.

The ECM debut of the Near East Quartet was recorded in Seoul in December 2016. The group, however, has been a force in Korean creative music since 2009, when leader-saxophonist-composer Sungjae Son formed the band with guitarist Suwuk Chung. Singer-percussionist Yulhee Kim and drummer Soojin Suh joined the group in 2015, helping the ensemble get closer to Son’s original vision of a natural music informed by improvisation and drawing upon gugak, the multi-facetted traditional music of Korea.

Together the four musicians play a floating music of drifting texture and slowly-blossoming sound colours, expressed through distortion saturated guitar sounds, the delicate tracery of Son’s saxophone, and abstract playing from the drums. Yulhee Kims’s evocative voice conveys messages from pansori epics and folk song. Kim also contributes to the improvisatory flow as percussionist, and on one piece, “Baram”, the quartet is augmented by Sori Choi on traditional Korean percussion.

Sungjae Son and Suwuk Chung met each other as Koreans abroad, in Boston, where both were studying. Sungjae was at the Berklee School and Suwuk at the New England Conservatory. “We didn’t really talk, then,” Sungjae recalls. “I was very much into bebop at the time, and Suwuk was more into fusion guitar and some Third Stream ideas [George Russell was among Suwuk’s teachers], and we didn’t find a common interest or background. It wasn’t until many years later when we were back in Korea that we ended up playing a gig together. After the concert I talked to him about wanting to make music with a completely fresh and different approach, and that was the start of the Near East Quartet.”

Meanwhile, Soojin Suh was beginning to make waves as the most interesting young female drummer on the Seoul jazz scene. Sungjae: “She was a very promising musician, and already quite famous in Korea. Everybody wanted to play with her. And then she, too, left to study in the USA. When she returned she had really grown as a player, and I just fell in love with her sound. She is the one and only drummer in Korea for me.”

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Album Review

Sungjae Son: Near East Quartet

Read "Near East Quartet" reviewed by Ian Patterson


Billed since its 2009 inception as Near East Quartet, the elevation of saxophonist Sungjae Son's name reflects the saxophonist's status as founder and de facto leader of this South Korean outfit, which forges a contemporary path from traditional roots. Its only previous album, the instrumental Chaosmos (KT Music, 2010) featured two percussionists alongside Son and co-founder, guitarist Suwuk Chong. The band's aesthetic changed significantly in 2015 with the addition of two women, pansori singer/percussionist Yulhee Kim and jazz drummer Soojin ...

6
Album Review

Sungjae Son: Near East Quartet

Read "Near East Quartet" reviewed by Mark Sullivan


Korean saxophonist Sungjae Son founded the Near East Quartet with the goal to form a bridge between traditional Korean music and American jazz. Korean music's traditional slow rhythmic feel is not immediately compatible with the regular rhythms of jazz--so it was up to the quartet's members to find a common ground. They followed different paths individually: Son and guitarist Suwuk Chung both studied in the United States, but at the time Son was a bebopper, while Chung was into fusion ...

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