Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Birdsong in Mulgoa (Improvisatory Mahk and Delicate Fingerprints) is inspired by Mulgoa Nature Reserve near my home in Western Sydney and the gentleness and expressive intensity moments of Seoul-based Kim Yuna's haegeum playing. When I walk through Mulgoa nature reserve, I sense a silence that is not silent. There is a spiritual presence that is felt visually and heard in murmurings of life suddenly broken by virtuosic birdsong at different intervals of time, that mirror the vivid red leaf moments and raw bark amid complex calligraphic-like gestures of interwoven branches and leaves. This music for haegeum draws on those colour presences in a space of time which mirrors a single tree branch bend but with glimpses of bush colours and lines of calligraphy. It draws on Korean architect Byoung Cho's concepts of Mahk as a raw presence of unadorned energy and the subtle materially-textured Bium 'emptiness' allow for an improvisatory creative making that unconsciously leaves fragile fingerprints of artisans. The form of the music begins in stillness moving through five sections each growing in colour moment intensities as improvisatory birdsong-like melodic flourishes and calligraphic bush-like New York-inspired free jazz entanglements, broken by moving colour stillness sections.

Work Details

Year: 2026

Instrumentation: Haegeum (yuhyeon C4, junghyeon F3).

Duration: 10 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

Commission note: Birdsong in Mulgoa (Improvisatory Mahk and Delicate Fingerprints) was written for and commissioned by Dr. Kim Yuna (solo haegeum) for her solo recital at the National Gugak Center, Seoul, South Korea on March 5, 2026.

The composer notes the following influences:
Korean architect Byoung Soo Cho’s Mahk and Bium principles, English colourist painter Catherine Goodman’s free gestural marks, the gentleness and expressive intensity moments of Seoul-based Kim Yuna’s haegeum playing, traditional Korean haegeum sanjo, and the New York-inspired free post-B-bop jazz entanglements of the Tyshawn Sorey Trio.