Guitar: 김수곤 (Kim Su Gon); Piano: 최유정 (Choi Yoo Jeong); Drums: 이수형 (Lee Su Hyeong); Bass: 정세준 (Jeong Se Jun)
김수곤 Quartet
In the Groove
Gwangju
April 24, 2026
(Jisu Sheen recently moved from New Haven to Gwangju, South Korea, where she’s covering local arts and culture for the New Haven Independent and Midbrow.)
You ever talk to someone who really understands you? So you can be subtle, and you don't have to worry about how your words are landing, which frees you up?
That's how I felt about the relationship between the musicians and the crowd at Gwangju jazz club In the Groove Friday night. The audience was tuned in. Even the smallest suggestion of a phrase could elicit a heavy nod.
Like the punk club I visited earlier this month, In the Groove is a basement venue tucked away in an alley. I descended another simple set of stairs that barely hinted at what awaited below. This time, I found not the stickered walls of a punk lounge but chandeliers, lamps, and framed photographs of jazz legends.
The guitarist for the evening, 김수곤 (Kim Su Gon), called the spot Gwangju's oldest jazz club. Founded 17 years ago, it's a place where patrons know the type of jazz the owner likes (Bossa Nova, Kim noted before leading the band in a Brazilian tune) and where a song can switch styles based on the feeling of the moment.
"It's supposed to be a ballad, but we ended up doing it blues," Kim said in Korean after the four-piece group wrapped a moody rendition of jazz standard "Old Folks."
It's also a place where worlds collide. Moments after I set up shop at the corner of the bar, Kim announced the band would play one more song before the break---"Evidence" by Thelonious Monk.
Bassist 정세준 (Jeong Se Jun) strolled through his solo, letting the audience join him as he stretched time itself to fit the notes. Kim's guitar answered its larger cousin with a light touch.
I chatted with Jeong after, telling him members of Monk's family live in New Haven, the city I just came from. When I said they are musicians too, Jeong replied in Korean, "It must go right down the family line."
Jeong started playing at the underground jazz club when he was 21 and still living in Gwangju. He's now 25, living in a more agricultural area of the Jeolla region in a city called Suncheon, which sounded beautiful to me.
"Don't come. There's nothing to do," he said.
I didn't believe him. What about the birds? The trees?
Ohh. He asked if I had 로망 (ro-mang, or romantic notions) about country life. Yep. I laughed. That was the perfect diagnosis.
As for Jeong, he misses the city, where he could see a variety of people every day and stay close to places like In the Groove. According to him, it's not just the oldest, but the biggest---and prettiest---jazz club in the area.
Under the warm, dim stage lighting, shadows split into twos and threes. To the side, people smoked in what looked like a telephone booth. The bartender leaned into the music, watching alongside everyone else.
The quartet's set was a time machine not to the future or to the past, but to the present (a place that can be surprisingly hard to find). The room was listening, mesmerized, catching all the little bits. We knew immediately when a moment was good.
Kim laid each note down like a flower on an altar. He hit a slide, and it felt almost gift-wrapped.
The musicians listened to each other out loud, and we got to listen to them listen. They accented each other's solos, easing back into the full band with no rush on the horizon. 최유정 (Choi Yoo Jeong) turned the keys into an all-encompassing, glittering topography. She tilted her head, catching the direction the music was going in next. When drummer 이수형 (Lee Su Hyeong) elevated the quartet's volume to a curtain of sound, no pauses, it came as a relief. That was where the night needed to be.
The bandmates' intersecting rhythms felt like a collection of stories being told at once. And they were all somehow about each other.
Kim didn't end the night before shouting out another jazz musician in the audience and telling us the night had made him feel at home. With a schedule to come back and play every second and fourth Friday of the month, he might as well put his name on the mailbox.
https://youtu.be/q8hbCvMnT64?si=GkhqCeASNNoC6WH5
