Discover the Unique Experience of ‘Sound… Silence… Breath…’ at 2026 Donghwamun Gugak Week

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[NewsCulture reporter Sangwan Lee] To mark Gugak Day, the 2026 Donhwamun Gugak Week, titled ‘Between… Sound… Breath…,’ will run June 5–6 at Seoul Donhwamun Gugakdang.

‘Between… Sound… Breath…’ is less about volume and spectacle and more about how we listen and how long we stay with a sound. Life is born, lingers, then fades; sound follows a parallel arc. Resonance arises, remains briefly in the air, then dissipates. The performance is designed so audiences can feel those transitional moments.

The performance centers on space — the silences as much as the sounds. Pauses between notes, the performers’ breathing, and the smallest gestures are treated as essential as instruments and voices. Audiences are not passive followers of a finished composition; they become witnesses to the moment a sound is born, to its slow unfolding, and to the way it scatters into the air.

Artistic director Wonil anchors the program. A longtime explorer of contemporary approaches to traditional music, he has led the Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra and the Hwaeom Music Festival. Working from sinawi’s improvisational impulse and collective breathing, he has developed a performance method that balances individual autonomy with the ensemble’s overall shape.

Response is a central pillar of Wonil’s music. The goal is not merely to hit prescribed notes; one musician’s breath can unsettle another’s tone, and a tiny shift in timbre can redirect the whole flow. That responsiveness helped make the Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra’s flagship “Banhyang (Echo)” series notable for its audience-engagement elements — sound moves off the stage and into the listeners’ bodies.

For this program Wonil leads the Sound Ritual Ensemble: Cy_樂. He handles sound making, percussion, and vocalizing; Kim Bora performs vocals; Hwang Jina plays the geomungo; and Han Jisoo plays the saenghwang. The geomungo’s deep, resonant strings, the saenghwang’s breath-sustained tones, the embodied quality of the voice, and percussive vibration form the spatial relationships that shape the piece.

Vocalist Kim Bora treats the voice not simply as a melodic instrument but as a physical presence, revealing sound through the states between breath, production, speech, and song. Hwang Jina’s geomungo provides a low, prolonged resonance that grounds the performance. Han Jisoo’s saenghwang produces sustained tones as breath moves through the instrument, blurring the line between silence and sound. Wonil’s percussion and sound design bind the three performers’ contributions into a single, ritualized flow.

Venerable Myungjin, who leads singing-bowl sound meditations rooted in Buddhist and Seon practice, also appears onstage. A singing bowl’s tone unfolds slowly and then fades; following that long decay draws attention to one’s own breathing. Listening here is not merely an activity of the ear but a somatic practice that slows body, breath, and mind.

Staging Gugak Week on Gugak Day is meaningful. For generations, gugak has been transmitted through body, voice, breath, and live practice rather than fixed notation. The breath of pansori, sinawi’s improvisation, sanjo’s rhythmic cycles, and the oral transmission of folk songs all operate in the present moment. ‘Between… Sound… Breath…’ revives this culture of listening and makes it the language of the stage.

The performance expands traditional music into a meditative experience, inviting the audience to attend to reverberation and silence. Onstage, performers listen and respond to one another’s breathing; in the hall, listeners lean forward to catch even the smallest echoes.

The venue matters. Seoul Donhwamun Gugakdang, situated opposite Changdeokgung Palace, merges traditional hanok architecture with contemporary design. Since opening in 2016 it has functioned as an intimate, dedicated stage for gugak. Its indoor hall, tuned for natural acoustics, and its outdoor gugak yard bring performers’ sounds and audience breath into close proximity.

The center was created to revive the traditional culture around Changdeokgung. Converting a former gas-station site into a gugak performance venue is itself an instance of urban cultural regeneration. Culture Bridge currently operates the hall under contract and, through performances, education, and curated programs, is broadening gugak’s contemporary possibilities.

‘Between… Sound… Breath…’ fits the character of the space. Rather than relying on large sets or theatrical excess, it foregrounds how sound emerges and vanishes, the time audiences inhabit, and the performers’ practice of listening to one another.

NewsCulture Sangwan Lee prizewan2@nc.press