Youn Sun Nah at K-Music Festival - 06.10.2024 @ Union Chapel, London
Songbird on a sunny day
It is the first week of October and you know what that means: it’s the first week of the K-Music Festival here in London, the start of an almost two-month run of programs showcasing Korean performance, music and artists, from Changgeuk (창극) to jazz.
In Union Chapel, the heat from the radiators makes it as far as your head, but doesn’t quite reach the rest of your body. There is the eternal smell of wood made smooth by a century of use, and the crackle and creaking of the pews. When the room goes dark and there is just the spotlight illuminating the stage, the light catches the hair of Youn Sun Nah so gently, she seems to wear a halo.
The room bounces a few notes played on the kalimba before they are picked up by the Rhodes and chiseled into the opening lines of Nina Simone’s Feelin’ Good, and the audience visibly, audibly, swooned. It is a classic piece of the jazz repertoire, it breathes comfort, familiarity, warmth. In the voice of Youn Sun Nah, you were carefully tucked in, your blankets smoothed.
But only for a moment before we were whisked straight into Libertango and the show put on its running shoes from there.
The pairing of Youn Sun Nah’s vocal spontaneity with Serbian jazz virtuoso Bojan Z fuelled a few incredibly creative takes on orchestrating the classics, adding drumming on the piano lid (which really drove home how sturdy grand pianos are) and plucking directly on the strings to the list of sound textures we were introduced to. In terms of sheer force, their God’s Gonna Cut You Down was a launched rocket getting faster and faster into outer space.
If you watch one video today, make it this one. You’ve not heard Asturias by Isaac Albeniz sound quite like this (and I’m sure he’s just as awestruck, wherever he is).
There is mastery masked as playfulness here - incredible vocal runs shaped by scatting, quick breath work that left me light-headed, brash oil-smooth switches from chest to mixed to head voice, her soprano resonating under the soft purple lights, the near abandon with which she thrust her voice from shape to shape to silk to booms.
Her eyes didn’t stop smiling for a second.
At the end of the first act, Youn Sun Nah picked up a little hand-cranked music box, complete with paper strip, iridescent from all the holes, and offered us a wonderfully quiet and tender Killing Me Softly. I’d never listened to the words so carefully before. When she moved away from the microphone, so that only the natural resonance of the room could pick up her voice, at first shy and slowly growing to a lullaby tone, the audience joined in on the last chorus.
Youn Sun Nah is embarking on a month-long tour of France and Germany, before heading over to the States. Check out tour dates here.
K-Music Festival has only just started and they have a packed program between now and 23rd of November. Check out all events here.