PAN Project // PAN Project CD

An album released in September 2021 by the PAN Project, a project that sublimates into contemporary music using traditional Chinese, Korean, and Japanese musical instruments.Contains 9 Asian Crossover tracks.Digipak, shrink specifications. Includes a 10-page booklet.

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Text by Neuma Records:

"In Greek,'Pan' means'everything.' But in Korean,'Pan' means'coming together,' and that is exactly what the PAN Project Ensemble is about: bringing together many East Asian traditions under one big canopy. Not merely a strip mall restaurant catch-all, this cross-cultural musical experiment brings together stars from Chinese, Korean, and Japanese traditions into a new and exciting blend with deep roots and intertwining tendrils.

This Neuma release not only introduces PAN Project as an ensemble, but also shows that what seems new and experimental to modern ears has its origins in the ancient Silk Road era. Take, for instance, the meeting of Chinese guqin and Japanese shakuhachi in the track 'Yi Gu Ren'. Both instruments connect to meditative practices of a once-foreign Buddhist religion whose traditions developed separately in China and Japan. They now come together in the modern day to be re-explored and reinterpreted. Or the tracks of the musical Korean pansori story-telling suite'Sugungga'. Here we have historical and modern intercultural-experimentalism at its most essential: ancient rhythmic cycles of Korean Shaman ritual, the telling of a farcical folk-tale illustrating timeless morals through speech and song, and an intercultural blend of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Western instruments expressing the drama through modern free improvisation.

Improvisation is indeed an essential element of the experimental process, and also of PAN Project Ensemble's music. The enduring spirit of spontaneity and experimentation exists in the very core of East Asian traditions; from the spiritually induced spontaneity of the guqin and shakuhachi traditions, to the both sparse and driving rhythms of Korean Shaman ritual, and the spontaneity of the instrumental ritual improvisation called sinawi.

The six members of PAN Project Ensemble – each renowned masters in their own right – are spread across the USA, Canada, and East Asia and bring the full weight of their cultural perspectives to this musical summit. may be surprised how new old is again. "

Artist: PAN Project

Label: Label: Neuma Records