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Since its foundation in 1989 by Chee-Yong Park, the Seoul Motet Choir has been awarded the 'Art of the Year Award' in 2004 thanks to its active and high-quality performances so far, and has been awarded the 'Korea Art Award' (Presidential Award), the highest honor of all artists, boasting the highest authority in the country in 2005. The Seoul Motet Choir, which was greatly recognized for its ability and musical value by winning the award as a music group rather than an individual for the first time, has grown into a professional performing group representing Korea's music industry. And it is evaluated as “the pride of pure choral music that leads Korea’s choral music” by being recognized both internally and externally for such continuous and vigorous performance activities.
The Seoul Motet Choir is the most sincere and faithful choir of musical contents through various and ambitious performances such as regular performances, regional performances, invitation performances, planned performances, and special performances for the underprivileged, as well as the musicians who are currently active. It has come to be evaluated as the most famous choir of And, through overseas performances in Taiwan, Saipan, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Canada, the USA, and Russia, they have been faithfully fulfilling their role as a cultural ambassador to inform the world of the level of Korean culture and music, especially in Japan (invited by the government in 2002) and toured Germany three times in 2002, 2005, and 2015, it was an opportunity to confirm that their musicality and performance are not inferior to the world level. Therefore, the Seoul Motet Choir has been designated as a <specialized art corporation> by the Seoul Metropolitan Government since 2001.
The Seoul Motet Choir has a wide range from choral masterpieces of the Renaissance era, the forerunner of modern Western music, to choral masterpieces from the Baroque era centered on J.S. Bach, representative choral works from the classical and romantic eras, and difficult and experimental contemporary music. It has a reputation for academically digesting a wide repertoire, and also presents a variety of popular and elegant repertoires for various stages and a wide audience. And they have been working steadily on recording, and have produced about 20 albums from 1990 to 2004. From 2005, they started to release a new series of albums called 'Inspiration', and so far 6 albums have been produced.
The performances and musical ability of the Seoul Motet Choir received favorable reviews from domestic and foreign critics as well as British composer and conductor John Rutter, who visited Korea in 1997, German conductor Werner Paff, and Belgian conductor Yos van den Borre. J.S. Bach's world authority on interpretation of music, Helmuth Rilling, Hungarian conductor Iván Fischer, and many other famous musicians at home and abroad, praised for being the best choir representing Korea.
The Seoul Motet Choir is an organization that not only serves as a model for their society and music scene through passion for the sound of life and a true professional spirit, but also promotes the outstanding artistic world of our people to the world and plays a pioneering role in choral music. |
