Akademie Percussion Ensemble, a widely renowned professional percussion group from South Korea, will share the stage at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium tonight, with an American percussion group, Galaxy Percussion.
Founded in 1993, APE was established at a time when percussion was not popular in South Korea, said Kang-Ku Lee, APE’s director and founder.
As the ensemble grew bigger it began to draw more attention to the music form. In 2007, APE performed in the Blue House, the presidential mansion in South Korea.
“The goal of this tour program is that we want to perform contemporary music, music written by mostly living composers, of Korean composers and American composers,” said Michael Udow, the founder of Galaxy Percussion. Udow is a composer and a retired professor of University of Michigan.
Last year, Lee invited Galaxy Percussion to tour with APE in South Korea for two and a half weeks. Lee had heard about Udow from Keiko Abe, a famous marimba player from Japan.
“(Abe) has been a good friend of mine since the 1980s,” Udow said. “She played with the Academy Percussion Ensemble as a soloist, and so Lee asked (Abe) who would be interested to be invited as a guest, so (Abe) recommended me.”
Language barriers proved to be a difficult but interesting barrier, said Roger Braun, a member of Galaxy and the director and professor of Percussion Studies at Ohio University.
“During the tour, we don’t speak Korean (and) they don’t speak English very much, so the communication between us was very slow,” said Braun.
Tonight, the two ensembles will perform a total of eight compositions incorporating instruments such as the marimba and xylophone, both originating from Asia and Africa. The performance will also include drums from Brazil, Afro-Cuba and the Middle East.
Each ensemble will perform three songs separately and then play together for the last two compositions.
“Considering the relationship of the two countries, this stage of percussion is part of our shared culture,” Lee said, adding that he hopes the audience, even those who are not familiar with percussion, can “enjoy the music just by listening.”
sw454711@ohiou.edu
