Doyeon Kim – Wellspring

Wellspring presents the arrival of a powerful new voice in creative music, unrelenting in passion and invention, while always transmitting a deeply empathic grace. Masterful composer-improviser Doyeon Kim is an unparalleled practitioner of the Korean gayageum (a silk-string zither), and is also in possession of a purposeful vocal intensity. This is her debut album as a bandleader, featuring fellow master musicians Tyshawn Sorey (drums), Mat Maneri (viola), Henry Fraser (bass).Armed with an unlikely traditional instrument, flanked by three extraordinary improvisers, radiating a brash, acoustic strategy that simultaneously invokes folk universalism and a No Wave battle-stance, the Brooklyn-based virtuoso has dropped a volcanic sonic statement with grand humanist goals. Kim mingles Korean lullabies, fervent interactions between drums and strings, and pure instrumental expressions of musical self.At times, she sounds like she can halt armies. Wellspring i