Asian Festival Ensemble is a group of classical music players which was mostly specialized in performing contemporary music and temporarily organized by Tongyeong International Music Festival 2009. It consisted of young classical musicians with brilliant talent from many Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, China, Thailand, Taiwan and New Zealand.
TIMF 2009 was held in Tongyeong, Korea, from March 27 to April 2, under the management of Tongyeong International Music Festival Foundation. As the annual theme of TIMF was determined as 'East & West', the Foundation wanted to develop a way to celebrate the meaning of 'East & West', and also fulfill the need to educate young musicians under TIMF's fundamental purpose of organization. In addition, TIMF 2009 was designed and planned to be cooperatively affiliated with Asian Composers League, which was about to provide a variety of newly composed works to have them be performed on TIMF's stage.
Prof. Sngkn Kim, the Managing Director of the Foundation, came up with an idea to constitute a chamber music ensemble comprising young Asian players under strong training of contemporary music. He discussed this idea with Prof. Gerhard Müller-Hornbach in Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main. Hornbach accepted it and Kim further invited Hornbach as the chief of education program.
The Foundation widely accepted recommendations from renowned professors and conservatories in Asia, and later on decided 36 outstanding members of Asian Festival Ensemble. The following is the list of members with nationality and instrument.
All the members were called on to come to Tongyeong, a few days prior to open TIMF 2009. When Hornbach came to Tongyeong, the scheduled education program was initiated, and a series of intense training was applied to the members over new works. The works they rehearsed were totally in contemporary style, and surprisingly, half of them were written by young composers who were almost around the same age as players and belonged to Asian Composers League.
In order to prove a success of the whole experiment, Asian Festival Ensemble presented their achievements out to the front of audiences. They performed in 2 concerts which were programmed as official performances of TIMF 2009. The following is the list of their success.
Audiences of these 2 concerts expressed a great deal of satisfaction and impression over success of this experiment. Asian Festival Ensemble has now been dissolved, but TIMF's experimentalism is expected to occur a few times more again in near coming future.