Photo by Stephanie Hough (click for more images…)
Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park (박한얼) (www.busterandfriends.com) has been working within/from/around traditions of fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, mostly open improvised musics for over fifteen years, sometimes engineering theater, sometimes inventing ritual. He feels the gravitational pull of collaborative, multi-authored contexts, and has worked with animators, film makers, poets, theater and mime performers, dancers and installation artists. He has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries, concert halls, and (ad-hoc) alternative spaces in Austria, Denmark, Germany, England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Scotland and the USA.
As a constructor of low- and mid-tech electronic and software devices, and as an occasional score-maker, he is interested in partial, and partially frustrating, context-specific artifacts; artifacts that amplify social relations and corporeal identities and agencies, and, in some instances, objects that obscure the location of the author.
He is part of Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, is involved in ongoing collaborations with Bruce Coates, with Franziska Schroeder, and fifteen year long associations with Alex Fiennes and Murray Campbell. Recent performances include Mathilde 253 with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith; duo concerts with Paul Dunmall, and with Richard Barrett; trios with Matana Roberts and Mark Sanders, with Catherine Sikora and Ian Smith, and with Jin Sangtae and Jeffrey Weeter; as part of the Evan Parker-led 20-piece improvising ensemble; and the performance of Pauline Oliveros’ ‘Droniphonia’ alongside the composer. Park has also recently performed with Lol Coxhill, Pat Thomas, Corey Mwamba, Mark Trayle, Pedro Rebelo, Alexander Hawkins, Mike Hurley, Chick Lyall, Jesse Ronneau, Thomas Buckner and Kato Hideki. He is the constructor of io 0.0.1 beta++, a machine improviser, and cofounder of the Church of Sonology. In addition to studying with Leo Smith, Barrett, Lyall and Trayle, he has studied with the improviser-composers Joel Ryan and David Rosenboom, composers Clarence Barlow and Marina Adamia, and the installation artist Sara Roberts.
Park is a recipient of grants from the Arts Council of Ireland (2007, 2007 and 2009) and Music Network (2009 and 2010), and a recipient of the Ahmanson Foundation Scholarship (1999) and the Calarts Scholarship (1999 and 1999–2000). Festival appearances include Sonorities (Belfast), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), dialogues festival (Edinburgh), VAIN Live Art (Oxford), and the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology Festival (California). In addition to numerous self-released CDs, his recordings have been released by Slam Productions, Owlhouse Recordings, frimp.co.uk and DUNS Limited Edition, and included on anthologies released by farpoint recordings and Frog Peak Music. He has performed live on Resonance FM (London) and on Drift Radio (at mediascot.org), and his recordings have been featured on RTÉ Nova (Ireland), Kalvos and Damian’s New Music Bazaar (Vermont), RTÉ Morning Ireland and You Are Hear (at youarehear.co.uk).
Park founded (2007) and curated (2007–2011) Stet Lab, a monthly improvised music space in Cork, Ireland, and taught improvisation at the UCC Department of Music (2006–2011).
press and quotes
“Guitarist Han-earl Park is a musical philosopher…. Expect unexpected things from Park, who is a delightful shape-shifter….”
— Brian Morton (Point of Departure)
“Han-earl Park… is as at home in underground Noise as he is dueting with free jazz heroes like Paul Dunmall. Park uses pedals to smudge and smear chords or rolls out strange robotic grumblings, a technician playing electricity as much as the guitar.”
— Daniel Spicer (Jazzwise)
“Remarkable strategies from the guitarist which involve investing each string with a different weight as he coaxes tones from near the machine head all the way down past the bridge.”
— Ken Waxman (JazzWord)
“Imaginatively dissonant barbedly-wire phrases and false-harmonic scatterings….”
— Ed Pinsent (The Sound Projector)
“Park applies every technique to his detuned ax—tapping, sliding, muting, twisting the machine heads. It’s simultaneously disciplined and barbaric.”
— Greg Burk (MetalJazz)
“Park is the one to pay close attention to… the development of his ideas is fascinating and very logical….”
— Jeph Jerman (The Squid’s Ear)
“Doesn’t sound like sewage!”
— Kalvos and Damian’s New Music Bazaar
“Bandy-legged Han-earl Park (gitah)… drugged the ref and delivered a few kidney punches with a horseshoe in his boxing mitt.”
— Jamie Smith (Owlhouse Recordings)
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