The U of A's Department of Music will present a special Music Monday Concert Series event, Lecture-Recital: Korean Art Song—The Enduring Voice of a Culture, on Monday, March 30, at 7:30 p.m. in Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall.
Led by Moon-Sook Park, soprano and associate professor of voice, the program offers an in-depth exploration of Korean art song as a rich intersection of poetry, language and cultural memory.
The lecture-recital will feature guest collaborative pianist Matthew Thompson (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) and cellist Jennifer Carpenter, a faculty member in the Department of Music at the U of A. Together, they will present a curated program that highlights the expressive and historical depth of Korean vocal literature.
Organized into thematic sections—including Nature and Poetic Origins, Inherited Sound, Seasons and Memory and contemporary reinterpretations of traditional melodies—the program traces a musical and cultural journey through Korea's art song tradition. The concept of heung, a uniquely Korean sense of shared emotional energy, will serve as a culminating element of the performance.
This event also reflects Park's recent Fulbright U.S. Scholar research at Freie Universität Berlin, which investigates the role of singing in language acquisition and cultural understanding. Through both scholarly insight and live performance, the program demonstrates how music functions as a powerful medium for linguistic and emotional expression.
To enhance audience accessibility, English translations will be provided within the presentation slides, along with printed program notes and a QR code for additional materials available at the venue.
The concert is free and open to the public. Tickets can be reserved through tickets.uark.edu.
Contacts
Britt Graves, student services and communications
Department of Music
479-575-4701, music@uark.edu