Tod Machover just returned from a five-day visit to South Korea to meet with violinist Won Hyung-joon, director of the Lindenbaum Festival Orchestra. Won has been trying for two decades to bring together musicians from South and North Korea as a way to promote peaceful reunification between the two countries. After seeing a documentary about Machover’s Symphony in D project, Won reached out to ask if he would be interested in collaborating. The two are discussing what a project to bring people from the two Koreas together through music would look like.
“Music is a way of connecting people through what people have in common but also let people open up about things that people deeply care about without necessarily putting words on them and it leaves us [with] some amazing things,” Machover said.
“I’m hoping to work together with South Koreans [to make] what is possible on the peninsula through music that can be sent back and forth between [the] South and North. I understand that it is very difficult, but if it can be realized, I think really extraordinary things can happen.”
Here’s an interview in Korea JoongAng Daily about the visit. Click on the image below to read it in pdf.
Opera of the Future 