South Korean jazz musician So-Young Yoon is on a roll, packing out Dublin’s Hyde Bar with her Groovy Sunday Jazz Master Album series, where each month, under her guidance at the piano stool, a classic jazz album is performed in its entirety by an ensemble of established and emerging musicians from Ireland’s thriving jazz scene. These gigs are a brilliant introduction to jazz and a chance for seasoned fans to have a “time machine experience” of hearing seminal works played live. Ever restless, Yoon has been ploughing fresh musical pastures, collaborating with Traditional players Séamus Gibson and Michelle O Brien, while also finding inspiration playing alongside the force of nature that is Mick Pyro.
In recent months you’ve been making a real impact on the Dublin jazz scene with a sold-out show in Arthur’s of Thelonious Monk’s music, and now your monthly gigs in Hyde bar where you perform famous jazz albums, but can you begin by telling us how you got started in music?
In Korea, I had plans to be a classical concert pianist and practiced piano for many hours a day from the age of five, also my father was an Evangelical preacher, so I played piano for very large congregations in his church.
Ah, there’s a real tradition of that in Jazz. Mingus, Monk and many others started out in church.
Yes, that’s how I developed my ear, playing behind badly singing priests, I had to learn key changes on the spot to keep up with them! When I was twenty, I went to study in the Seoul Jazz Academy and that’s when everything changed for me, I heard the music of Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, days and nights were spent transcribing their solos, the first thing that really got me was the rhythm and the harmony, and I felt a real sense of ecstasy the first time I played piano with bass and drums behind me.
What were some of your first experiences of the Irish jazz scene, and how did they compare with Korea?
After moving here, I started going to local gigs and often saw The Dirty Jazz Club at The International Bar. One day when piano player Darragh O’Kelly was unavailable, the band leader Connor Murray asked me if I’d like to dep for him, that’s how I got started here. I noticed that here it’s all about individuality, I mean, “What have you got?” If you sound like other players, people aren’t going to listen to you, here you are judged by your musicality and not just your qualifications.
Depping for Daragh seems to have brought you good fortune…
Yes, Daragh was away for the launch night of Mick Pyro’s album “Exit Pyro”, so he asked me to sit in for him, I toured with Mick after that. Mick wants his pianists to improvise. He was, musically, my best teacher. My classical teachers taught me how to interpret texts, but Mick showed me how music works in the real world, and how to gig. He reawakens in me the truth that music is about primal urges, confronting the relentlessness and savageness of life. How music belongs to fearlessness, beauty and the bitterly vulnerable state of the human mind. He’s like an alchemist in how he balances sound, and a shaman in how he performs. With him, I really learned how music is created in the public domain, how the audience is perceived, and how their energy is integrated into the music itself.
I love your interdisciplinary approach, and how open you are to learning from other musicians and styles of music other than jazz and classical. Tell me how you first encountered Irish Traditional music, and what are your thoughts about it?
My son’s music teacher, fiddler Michelle O Brien, sent some audio homework for him to study, and I immediately heard something so unique and extraordinary in her playing, It wasn’t just “an exercise” to be studied, it turned out that she was a six time all Ireland champion player and a protégé of Trad legend Tommy Peoples. I invited her to join me at my 2023 Bray Jazz Festival gig. We finished the show with a jazz version of “Gangnam Style” and some tunes by Mícheál Ó Súilleabhaín.
Whenever I play with Michelle, we always seem to get sucked into a spiritual space, especially when we play the Co. Clare song “An Gaoth Aneas”, we are always in tears while playing that tune. I can’t quite understand the power this song has over me. I’ve never experienced this kind of emotional effect before, it’s almost like a breakdown. This is a very rare and precious thing, and I make sure not to over play the tune, I hope I can cherish its power forever. Irish music has such strong melodies full of spirit and soul.
It’s very moving to hear you speak of your deep connection to that tune in particular, “An Gaoth Aneas” was huge part of the soundtrack of my childhood as it’s on Seán Ó Riada’s famous Gaiety Concert album which was always on at home. It’s wonderful to know that music like this has such universal resonance. Last Summer you had a chance to deeply immerse yourself in the music and cultural life of Donegal when you were awarded an IMC Navigator Artist in Residence at the An Grianán Theatre Letterkenny, how did that go for you?
I got to work with the virtuoso traditional fiddler and composer Séamus Gibson. At first, we didn’t seem to have much in common except for our no-nonsense approach to music making. Séamus’s natural ability with melody is shockingly good, his composition “George Peoples”, which he wrote when he was seventeen, is incredible and has become a trad standard, a part of the repertoire.
He’d play his compositions, and I’d improvise harmonies and accompaniments around him. We also played Ó Súilleabhaín’s tunes “The Old Grey Goose” and “Woodbrook”. We did this for hours each day and developed a real rapport. It took a few days for two musicians from different genres to finally swing together, but when it happened, it was magical. The last day of the residency culminated in a concert performance with me, Séamus and Derry flute player Murrough O’ Kane.
Since then, playing powerful melodies and beautiful songs from each county of Ireland has become a crucial part of my music. It really helped me to realize the reason why I started music in the first place, the fascination with melody and songs. It’s easy to forget all this when you are caught up working on improvisations and developing various technical aspects of music. Playing with Michelle and Séamus has become such an important part of my life.
Your practice, and your outlook embodies so much of what I most admire, Internationalism, and the blurring of cultural boundaries. Your current Groovy Sunday Jazz Master Album Series at Hyde Bar is proving to be a real success, I wish such a series had been there years back when I was getting into jazz, how did it come about?
The series started last September 2024, downstairs in The International Bar performing Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue”. The motivation came from the urge to investigate historical masterpieces in depth for musicians including myself and to provide a “Time Machine” experience for the audience. Since then, we’ve played “Time Out” by Dave Brubeck, Getz/Gilberto, Headhunters by Herbie Hancock, and The Atomic Mr. Basie. We’ll be playing Pat Metheny’s “Letter from Home” (March 30th and April 2nd) with guitarist Chris Guilfoyle filling Metheny’s boots!
No doubt, he’ll fill them very well! I’ve been so impressed with the large, and very diverse crowds that you draw to the gigs, how has it been for the musicians involved?
This concert series has created some really interesting contexts for collaborations between musicians from very different backgrounds. There are students and teachers from the DCU Jazz Department playing alongside classical musicians from the Royal Irish Academy who want to explore jazz. Each gig requires a different combo which I put together depending on the album being played. I draw from a pool of Irish, South American, Asian and Eastern European musicians. There’s always a healthy and respectful chemistry between us. Some of us have more than twenty years experience of playing while others are fantastic, young, emerging musicians.
In many ways, this series reflects the evolving cosmopolitan landscape of Dublin, and what better way to celebrate all that cross fertilization, and its infinite possibilities than by reinterpreting classics from that most collaborative of art forms, Jazz, “the sound of surprise”. So, what other projects do you have on your already beautifully cluttered horizon?
Further explorations of improvisation and Traditional music for sure and keeping Sundays Groovy with more presentations of classic albums at Hyde Bar.
Words: Billy O’Hanluain
Groovy Sunday Jazz Master Album series presents Pat Metheny’s “Letter from Home” on Sunday April 6th at Hyde Bar, Lemon St, Dublin 2
