■ Ahead of his 50th anniversary, he will share the 'Sync Next 26' stage with younger artists
Prodigy composer Lee Ha-neuri among those on one stage
He will rework his songs into K-pop
“I want to move at least one step closer to K-pop”
Prodigy composer Lee Ha-neuri among those on one stage
He will rework his songs into K-pop
“I want to move at least one step closer to K-pop”
I wondered whether the word “contemporary” really applies to a singer with a 50-year career. Through this concert, I hope songs I once dismissed as merely old will gain a renewed sense of immediacy. Kim Chang-wan (72·photo), who will mark his 50th year since his debut next year, is taking on another new challenge. Even after turning 70, he greets listeners daily as a radio DJ and leads the Kim Chang-wan Band on nonstop nationwide tours — a multi-entertainer driven by curiosity and passion. This time he will share the stage with artists one to two generations younger, including 20-year-old prodigy composer Lee Ha-neuri. They will appear together in the contemporary series Sync Next 26, organized by the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts.
At a media day on the 27th at Seoul’s Sejong Center, Kim said Sync Next felt like an invitation to sync with the present, and that the word “contemporary” resonated in an unexpected way. “I don’t think ‘contemporary’ originates with me,” he said. “It’s a declaration among peers: ‘You are with me.’ I expect this project will help me uncover a present-tense side of myself I don’t yet know.” On this stage, Kim plans to reimagine his music through a contemporary K-pop lens. “K-pop has swept the globe, and as a musician I realize how far we’ve been from it,” he said. “By moving even a single step closer, perhaps we’ll regain a sense of contemporaneity.”
Kim’s concerts on Aug. 28–29 are part of Sync Next 26, which runs July 3–Sept. 5 at the Sejong S Theater. Sixteen artist collectives will present 10 programs across 28 performances. To mark the 140th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Korea and France, the series opens with a work by six Korean and French musicians that blends Eastern and Western traditional instruments with electronic sound. The season continues with boundary-pushing experiments: a collision of talchum, the Korean mask dance, with heavy metal; a play that spends three hours waiting for a total solar eclipse; and Lee Ha-neuri’s music-theater adaptation of the fairy tale “The Three Little Pigs,” among other genre-defying works.
