If you live, pushed along by a busy routine, the chance to look into your own heart tends to arrive the latest. The Hye Gwang-sa temple of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism and the Seonmyeongsang Central Headquarters have set up a stage to fill this gap. It is the ‘The Road to Find Myself - Seonmyeongsang Music Concert for Healing,’ set to be held on July 7 at Art Hall Maq located at the Mapo Art Center in Mapo-gu, Seoul.
Backed by support from the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the concert is free of charge, and anyone can take part regardless of religion. At the center of the program is jazz vocalist Woongsan. Serving as both the overall director and music director, he personally shapes the character of the entire stage.
A stage where music and meditation flow in the same breath
This music concert was planned as a convergence performance that combines Seonmyeongsang (mindfulness meditation) with modern artistic healing. It does not stop at simply watching the stage. The biggest feature is a participatory format in which the audience follows their breathing directly and looks inward at their emotions.
From the planning stage, organizers had in mind professions routinely exposed to emotional labor and stress, such as soldiers, police officers, firefighters, and teachers. Of course, any citizen who needs an emotional rest is more than qualified to sit in front of this stage.
Woongsan, who serves as music director, is a vocalist who won both the Jazz Album of the Year and the Best Jazz Song of the Year at the 2008 Korean Popular Music Awards. He has built his own musical language by passing through major jazz stages around the world, including the New York Blue Note and Tokyo Billboard Live. He is now working to broaden the domestic jazz base, serving as the chairman of the Korea Jazz Association and as artistic director of the Seoul Jazz Festa.
Jazz, Korean traditional music, and traditional arts meet on one stage
On the stage, along with Woongsan, performers who cross between jazz, Korean traditional music, and traditional sounds take the stage together, including a ajaeng player Shin Hyeon-sik, a saxophonist Lee Jeong-sik, a daegeum player Lee A-ram, a cellist Kim Gyu-sik, a sori singer Lee Bong-geun, and a dancer Paek Gyeong-woo, as well as musicians such as Kang Jae-hun, Hwang Ho-gyu, Choi Woo-jun, and Shin Dong-jin. Rather than drawing a clear line between genres, the composition is designed so that they seep into one another and create a single flow.
The performance unfolds meditative music and real-time emotional healing sessions based on the harmony of jazz and Korean traditional music. Music therapy and guided breathing meditation are added, and with the integration of video, lighting, and even scent, it expands beyond a listening-only concert into an experience that the whole body can take in. The stage will likely be one where a deep breath comes out before applause after each song ends.
Beyond the concert: Charting a standard for healing culture
The organizing side does not confine this stage to a one-off event. It emphasizes the meaning of the stage as a new public cultural content model that combines art, meditation, and healing. The organizers said this also aligns with a recent trend in which cultural and artistic activities are becoming more than just leisure and are taking root as a means of emotional stability and recovery.
‘The Road to Find Myself’ is one branch of a healing culture diffusion initiative promoted by Hye Gwang-sa and the Seonmyeongsang Central Headquarters. Its goal is to establish a standard model for a public cultural program that fuses Seonmyeongsang with modern artistic healing. Using this concert as a stepping stone, the organizers plan to expand exchanges of healing arts at home and abroad, and in the future to extend the program to major temples and cultural spaces across the country as well.
Detailed information about the concert and the schedule for viewing applications will be released step by step through the official Instagram of the Seonmyeongsang Music Concert.