Dr. Dragon Studio has released its first album, 'Fragile Beauty,' on November 10, adapting all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets into music as part of the 'DiVerse' project. The album was simultaneously made available on major domestic music platforms, including Melon, Genie, Bugs, and Flo, at noon.
The title track, 'Fragile Beauty,' is based on Sonnet 65, capturing the delicate nature of love and beauty that endures against time through guitar arpeggios and cello melodies. The album features a total of 15 tracks, including 'Liquid Prisoner,' inspired by Sonnet 5, and 'Tick Tock,' which expresses Sonnet 12 through the sound of a ticking clock.
The sound is characterized by a chamber folk style, incorporating nylon guitar, upright contrabass, cello, viola, flute, harmonium, and clarinet. The vocals are performed by the AI singer 'NikkiD.'
The studio won first place in July at the 'AI Love Jazz' composition contest in Montreux, Switzerland, with its reinterpretation of Sonnet 97 titled 'Frozen Edge.' In September, it received an excellence award at the Jeonju Cultural Foundation's 'AI Korean Traditional Music Crossover Composition Contest' for 'Aesis Now,' which reinterprets the classical poem 'Goin' by Im Mae-chang.
The album will be available on international platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify starting in late November. Future releases will include a series of albums adapting Shakespeare's works across various genres, including jazz, blues, hip-hop, rap metal, and K-pop, with plans to create progressive rock operas based on 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth,' as well as a project to set all of Im Mae-chang's poetry to music.
Dr. Dragon stated, "True memories and songs do not fade away even after hundreds of years," adding, "We want to convey the vitality of classics through today's musical language."
* This article has been translated by AI.
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