Park Jiha

Park Jiha’s music is filled with a rare, otherworldly beauty. She takes ancient Korean instruments such as the yanggeum (hammered dulcimer), saenghwang (free reed mouth organ), and piri (double-reed bamboo oboe), and creates spine-tingling soundworlds that evoke nature, the living world and the subtle transience of time. Jiha balances tradition and improvisation.

Her music fluctuates between the deeply meditative and the dramatically dynamic. She is formally trained yet she favours a profound interaction with the present moment. This will be a very special concert in the immersive acoustic of St George’s.

Debuting as a soloist with Communion in 2018, Park refined her craft with Philos (2019) and The Gleam (2022). Vigorously exploring new creative pathways, her voiceless soundscapes found discordant harmony in a wildcard collaboration with Scouse poet Roy Claire Potter, recorded for BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction in 2022 and released by Café Oto’s Otoroku imprint. In her first foray into film scoring, she applied her cinematic sensibilities to Garth Davis’ cli-fi psychological thriller Foe, soundtracking the dying earth to contrast Oliver Coates’ parallel and intersecting
contributions.

Tonight she will play material from The Gleam and her new album All Living Things (released early 2025). St George’s and Park Jiha have been working hard to make this concert happen for a very long time; the pandemic and difficulties of international travel had made it hard. We are so delighted it is finally happening and Bristol will get an opportunity to experience Park’s extraordinary music.

“Creative and singular”- Pitchfork