A Q&A with the artists behind 365 days and more

We spoke to Songeun Choi and Leah Park ahead of their event during the 2021 Festival, 365 Days & More, to find out a little more about them and their performance.

Can you tell us a bit about yourselves?
We are recent graduates/studying piano at the Royal Academy of Music. We met at the Purcell School of Music ten years ago and have done several concerts and projects together. We decided to join together for another project about the current global situation and explore more ways of delivering concerts.

How did you become involved in Bloomsbury Festival?
Originally, this project was organised as part of our collaborative module at the Academy. Our module leader told us about Bloomsbury Festival and the theme ‘Shining Light’ seemed to be a perfect match for what we had planned and we were recommended to take part!

Can you tell us what prompted the idea of ‘365 Days and more’ and how the event has been developed?
During the time we had to plan this project, we were in the middle of one of the longest lockdowns and it was (and still is) one of the biggest global issues. We thought about the impact it had on musicians and audiences and reflected on how much we missed our daily lives. A major change this year when planning this project was that social distancing was still in place and we couldn’t have huge numbers of performers which prompted the idea of recorded performances, which also worked well for live streaming.

Tell us what audiences can expect?
The main focal point of this concert will be a video on the projector screen. There will be interaction between the screen, actor and performer to take the audience through a journey of what was a difficult year during Covid-19, following the actor’s emotions through darkness to find happiness at the end.

What other events during the 2021 Festival are you looking forward to seeing?
All the events look interesting but Lockdown and Before especially captured our attention as it follows a similar theme to our concert but explored in a different way, through photographs.

Book tickets for Songeun & Leah’s performance, 365 Days & More.