Eunhye Jeong - NOLDA (September 24, 2021 ESP - Disk')

Korean pianist Eunhye Jeong is a game-changer. She’s jazz from a different perspective. She’s a pianist who doesn’t sound like anyone else on the scene.

In her liner notes for the release, Jeong writes, “I made my first solo piano recording under the name Chi-Da. Chi-Da and Nolda can both be translated as “play.” While Chi-Da refers to physical motions that produce sounds by crashing together two objects, Nolda is more associated with playful activities. One may interpret this word as a fun, free-flowing action on the piano. That is partly true, but I dare ask: who can have fun and experience true freedom without “knowing thyself”? Nolda means transcending the physical reality without abandoning it at all, which is made of body, mind, and the world. We music creators are artists who work with invisible and intangible energy forms as ingredients to create. Nolda, in this sense, is the magic of music-making.”

1. Perspective Shifts

2. Strange Rocks

3. Blue Sun

4. Columnar Jointing

5. Rooted

6. Ultraviolet-lightly Coated

7. Emerging Islands

8. Threading Stories

9. If I Were

Eunhye Jeong, piano

Recorded at Futura Productions, Roslindale, MA on January 8, 2021

Mixed and mastered by Travis Karpak

PREORDER

Eunhye Jeong - Chi​-​da (May 26, 2018)

The motive of the recording is my art name Hyun Gok 玄曲 given by my Pansori teacher Il-dong Bae. Hyun means ‘black (mixed with dark red)’, ‘mystery of universe or the invisible principle of life’. Gok means ‘curved’, ‘curve’ and ‘song’. I’ve contemplated on Hyun Gok for about three years, trying to understand its meaning and to realize that in my musical creations. Hyun Gok brought my attention to the moment of beginning - rather similar to the idea of singularity - and the silence before the music manifests. 

Chi-da is a verb in Korean meaning ‘hit’, and ’play’ a percussive musical instrument in a musical context, the action of playing, hitting to resonate/make/produce sounds. The contemplation on this very action is where the entire music was rooted and grown from in this record. All takes/pieces were created spontaneously out of the unsprung seeds of ideas buried in my mind over time, except Mysterious Valley, an existing composition of mine, which I re-constructed as improvising. The end result was 23 tracks in total; about 3 hours in length and I selected 13 tracks that spoke to me as I listened every day for about a month. 

In this record, silence is not just a part of music but the essence and the source of where music is created from. It is also an invitation to a deeper listening. The action of Chi-da happens in time. It is where time meets the space, creating and marking the presence of present with weight. 

Eunhye Jeong

1. Flesh and Bone 10:38

2. One Bears Many 05:09

3. Five Petals 07:03

4. Mysterious Valley 06:14

5. Dance Alone 05:24

6. The Dialectical Two 04:08

7. Beginning 03:10

8. Collapsing Stars 06:34

9. Nal Ssi 06:20

10. Ulda 05:16

11. Pictures of You 03:33

12. Weigh On 06:55

13. Running Planets 03:26