Sori Frontier

“Sound Frontier” is the Sori Festival's project that has been running since 2010 to discover new artists, now in its 15th year. A total of 43 teams have been selected and introduced to major overseas stages such as the Penang Jazz Festival (Malaysia) and Skiyaki Meets the World (Japan), constructing the foundation for new possibilities for traditional Korean music and its expansion into the global market.

This year's Jeonju Int'l Sori Festival has been chosen as the representative traditional genre festival by the “Genre-Specific Market Hub Support Project” organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Arts Management Service. In this context, the festival will launch <SoriNEXT>, the only traditional music distribution platform in Korea. Through this new attempy, “Sori Frontier” aims to go beyond discovering new artists and serve as a platform connecting artists with the music market.

“Korean Music Group SOAK,” “SINAVI,” “Gong-Sang,” and “Cho Suna” are the selected teams by the Sound Frontier competition, having passed the second round (live performances). They will perform on the stage at the <SoriNEXT> showcase during the Sori Festival period: on August 13 (Wed) and 14 (Thu). One team selected through expert and audience evaluations will have an international showcase later this year. Let us keep attention to see which team will be chosen in the end.

Gong-sang

“Gongsang (imagination)” is commonly used to describe something about unrealistic, useless, or inefficient. However, this often serves as a source of creativity for artists. Creator Kang Taehun dreams of being an artist who enjoys freedom, seeking to realize his addictive fantasies without being bound by any forms of genre or tool. All of this stems from “Gongsang,” and the starting point for everything was always the instrument of geomungo. Kang Taehun is not imagining for the sake of understanding music but for the sake of sensing it. He seeks to present music that allows listeners to gradually immerse themselves deeply in a space created by the intertwining of all these sensations, moving back and forth between space and sensation.