This event is included with the Friends of Reethaus annual pass with an exclusive preview at 1pm.
ceiling service presents a listening experience based on Cosmic Human Symphony by Lim Yong Ju, a contemporary work that integrates traditional Korean instruments and modular synths into an original composition.
ceiling service began as an ambient music event series in Seoul. Bringing together leading electronic and experimental performers, ceiling service skillfully employs sound, architecture, lighting and scent to create new conditions for collective listening.
Lim Yong Ju studied traditional Korean music from a young age, eventually majoring in traditional Korean percussion before becoming interested in electronic music and modular synths. Lim does not differentiate between traditional and digital instruments — to him, all the music he makes is contemporary and its timbres express our moment in time.
For Cosmic Human Symphony, Lim worked with four traditional musicians who between them played a full menagerie of instruments: a variety of flutes, drums and bells, along with Korean relatives of the trumpet, zither and dulcimer. Lim played the buk, a kind of Korean barrel drum, and nine electronic instruments. By this orchestration of the analog and the electronic, Lim created a richly textured epic imbued with the power to provoke associations and memories.
Lim considered the four cardinal directions when placing the instruments on the sound stage during live recording, making Cosmic Human Symphony a tribute to elements of Asian philosophy. At Reethaus, Maarten Vos brings a special edit of this piece, mixed in spatial audio especially for this listening experience.
