DoYeon Kim, Tyshawn Sorey, Mat Maneri, Henry Fraser - Wellspring (2026) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Wellspring presents the arrival of a powerful new voice in creative music, unrelenting in passion and invention, while always transmitting a deeply empathic grace. Masterful composer-improviser DoYeon Kim is an unparalleled practitioner of the Korean gayageum (a silk-string zither), and is also in possession of a purposeful vocal intensity. This is her debut album as a bandleader, featuring fellow master musicians Tyshawn Sorey (drums), Mat Maneri (viola), Henry Fraser (bass).

Armed with an unlikely traditional instrument, flanked by three extraordinary improvisers, radiating a brash, acoustic strategy that simultaneously invokes folk universalism and a No Wave battle-stance, the Brooklyn-based virtuoso will drop a volcanic sonic statement with grand humanist goals on May 1. Kim mingles Korean lullabies, fervent interactions between drums and strings, and pure instrumental expressions of musical self. At times, she sounds like she can halt armies. Wellspring is a call for society to come together.

How the Seoul, South Korea-born 34-year-old came to be the centuries-old zither’s leading -and perhaps only- practitioner of contemporary improvised music, reflects an expansive embrace of her own culture, her place in modern society, and her ascending recognition of music’s liberatory power.

>>> DoYeon Kim will be presenting her work this year at Big Ears in March; Vision Festival & Solar Myth in June; Angel City Jazz Festival, Earshot Jazz Festival, and additional west coast US appearances in October; with more dates in both the US and Europe to follow. >>>

DoYeon Kim’s teachers at Seoul National University recognized that her roving musical mind—less interested in ancient repertoire than in speaking to the modern world—needed challenges. America beckoned, with the New England Conservatory offering a non-ethnomusicological pathway via its Contemporary Improvisation department. It set off a process of analyzing, absorbing, digesting, and, most of all, listening. Under the guidance of NEC instructor and legendary guitarist Joe Morris, in came the methodologies of Ornette, Braxton and Derek Bailey, to name a few. The turn initiated a still-evolving relationship to playing: “Music is way bigger than me,” Kim says. “After the pandemic, I was no longer interested in talking about me. I wanted to find the reason I was born in this era, and how I can contribute to society.”

Mixing her voice with the gayageum’s dynamics gave Kim’s performances a previously unforeseen power. Kim recognized how such elements echoed the Korean pansori tradition of musical storytelling. The discovery coincided with her increased desire to share narratives, while Kim’s delivery created an unforeseen sonic dynamic that suddenly made aspects of her work harken to the post-punk-influenced sound of late-1970s and ‘80s Downtown NYC.

Kim has released works alongside Joe Morris and Brandon Lopez. Her 2017 duo album GaPi with Chase Morrin garnered a Korean Grammy nomination. And she’s shared stages with Kris Davis, Cooper-Moore and John Hébert, among many others. Now, Wellspring, is the recorded culmination of her growth period. It is a rumbling record, with wall-to-wall big sounds, all Kim compositions or group improvisations, built on immediacy and gusto.

DoYeon Kim: gayageum, voice, composition
Tyshawn Sorey: drums
Mat Maneri: viola
Henry Fraser: bass

Tracklist:
01 The Beats of Distant Thunder
02 Walking in the Dream
03 Whispers Among Dawn
04 Sun Shower
05 Diffraction
06 Linear System
07 Calculus of Our Souls


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