One Vs. Fifty-four

Trying to finish the second of two pieces for the Hong Kong Sinfonietta’s 09-10 season. I’ve very much enjoyed spending most of the last 12 months writing music for the Sinfonietta. On my end, it felt like an informal residency; I had two commissions for two concerts, almost five months apart, which meant that I got to write a piece (The Queens Gramophone), listen to it being rehearsed, see it performed, and then write a second piece for the same orchestra (The Gestures of Farewell), and be there for the rehearsals and performance. I am pretty sure an opportunity like this won’t be repeated in the future, so I took it on – without really thinking about it too much. And I’m glad I didn’t! Because if I had realized just how much work it would involve to write two entire orchestra pieces in a few months’ time, I probably would’ve just freaked out and called it quits.

The second piece is my fifth collaboration with writer Benjamin Rogers, who’s been really generous in allowing me to mutilate color his words with music, sometimes comprehensibly, other times not. The last piece we did together was called This Evidence, and it used notated speech and speech rhythms as a major part of the piece’s concept. Gestures will do much the same thing, only now exploded to an ensemble that includes a 54-piece (at least) orchestra.

The new piece is commissioned by the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and is slated for performance on March 4, 2010 at Hong Kong City Hall, as a part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. The Sinfonietta had asked me to write this piece specifically because their artist associate this year, Jason Lai, is a triple-threat: conductor, composer, broadcaster. (I suppose “broadcaster” could translate in the U.S. as “TV host / personality”.) Yip Wing-sie, the Sinfonietta’s music director, had mentioned how much she liked Walton’s Façades, had remembered that I enjoy working with words, and suggested that the new piece would use Mr. Lai as a narrator, accompanied by an orchestra.

I do like using words, and lately I have been thinking about the medium in terms of its dramatic possibilities. I’m currently working on fashioning *some* sort of program notes for the piece. In the mean time, though, I passed by a few thoughts regarding the nature of “narrator and orchestra”:

“The concerto is a claustrophobic medium. The soloist, ever expressive, ever trying to break free into song, remains entrapped in the front, unable to retreat, unable to advance, one against fifty-four. This dramatic contrast has always fascinated me, the underlying psychology, the way that the orchestra can obliterate, yet support, and yet bring a work into existence – all in a tight-rope balancing act with the soloist.”

You know, that made less sense than I had hoped it would. Maybe it (or something like it) will make its way into the program notes. Time will tell.

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The Other East Coast

I jokingly refer to either Hong Kong or North Carolina (and thereabouts) as “the other east coast”, depending on whom I’m speaking to. I think there’s something to having grown up next to the ocean, be it the Atlantic or the Pacific. I’ve always enjoyed having the ocean nearby, or just the concept thereof, even if I am not always willing to actually get in. Living close to a large body of water gives the illusion of expanse, even though I spend most of my time pounding my head against the proverbial (emphasis on “proverbial”) piano.

I just got back from a performance with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, where they played my new piece The Queen’s Gramophone on a concert with the Mendelssohn violin concerto and Beethoven’s 8th symphony. I enjoyed Mr. Matthew Trusler’s playing a whole lot, even if it’s a bit controversial. (Maybe you’re reading this, Matthew, but I was defending your interpretations post-concert to some colleagues. And – Why not? I sure enjoyed hearing a Mendelssohn which I truly have *never* heard before.)

Did I mention that it’s the year of Mendelssohn? But come now, when isn’t it the year of Mendelssohn? (Was I being ironic? …who knows anymore.)

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Hello world!

Happy Thanksgiving! Something about this cool November air prompted me to think of new beginnings, and I finally got up and plowed my way through a new website design. There’s nothing like looking at a bunch of websites, thinking about how they may or may not work with what you had in mind, picking out the stuff that worked, cannibalizing their CSS, jamming it into your own, have it not work, then troubleshoot, then have it sort of work, and then finally have it work, that really makes me feel alive. That and procrastination. Really turns me on.

Incidentally, this site is inspired a lot by the Criterion Collection’s website. And also that there’s not much to it, as I really honestly don’t know all the tricks yet to CSS. So, once this post disappears into the archives, people will eventually just assume that a) I am one of those Helvetica-driven, minimalist site designers; b) I was too cheap to pay for someone to design it; c) I don’t know enough Photoshop or Gimp to make any graphics; and/or d) this is a lame reworking of “Kubrick”.

There’s music here, and there’s also finally an events calendar that I could just enter in Wordpress and have them show up in order by date. It’s wonderful! I hope you like it. :)

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