Uncharted ’26: Night 2

Unbound Strings: Featuring DoYeon Kim & Firas Zreik DoYeon Kim Website / Instagram Show Description: For her Uncharted performance, DoYeon Kim presents a project exploring how music can recover and reconnect us to emotions that often go unspoken in times of uncertainty and upheaval. Rooted in the depth of Korean musical tradition and shaped by her life in New York City, the work bridges cultural sensibilities and contemporary experience. Through the sound of the gayageum (Korean zither) and voice, Kim creates space for listeners to fully inhabit feelings of sadness, joy, anger, and peace—offering moments of reflection, resonance, and renewal. The performance features DoYeon Kim (gayageum and vocals) alongside Tom Rainey (drums), Laura Cocks (flute), and Henry Fraser (bass), each contributing their distinct musical voice to the quartet’s expansive sound world. Bio: DoYeon Kim is an internationally acclaimed artist known for her expansive, pioneering performances and compositions, and for introducing the gayageum—an ancient Korean zither—into contemporary music. Trained extensively in jazz and improvisation as well as in the classical Korean traditions of sanjo, jeongak, and modern gugak, she channels history, literature, and an evolving sense of the human spirit into a musical language entirely her own through original works, powerful solo performances, and global collaborations. Named one of Grammy.com’s “7 Musicians Pushing Ancient Asian Instruments Into the Future” (2021), DoYeon has received the Van Lier Fellowship (2023), a Korean Grammy Award nomination (crossover category, 2018), and was most recently selected as a Next Jazz Legacy awardee (2025). After winning major traditional music competitions in Korea, including the Dong-A Ilbo Traditional Music and National Gugak Center Korean Music Competitions, she pursued contemporary improvisation and jazz studies at the New England Conservatory and the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, becoming the first student admitted to both programs to perform on a Korean traditional instrument. She has since served on the faculty at the New England Conservatory and The New School, lectured internationally at institutions including Harvard and the Franz Liszt Academy, and continues to lead her own projects while collaborating widely; recent roles include invited composer for Delirium Musicum (2025), Music Director of the ACCX Music Festival Gwangju (2025), and music director and conductor of the Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra (2023), alongside performances and recordings with artists such as Tyshawn Sorey, Kris Davis, Peter Evans, and many others.   Firas Zreik Website / Instagram Show Description: For his Uncharted performance, Firas Zreik combines his deep understanding of the Maqam tradition—the scale system found in Levantine, North African, and Mediterranean music—with elements of contemporary global musical styles encountered through a lifetime of travel and study. Centered on the kanun (Mediterran...