19 May 2024
Kinabalu National Park, Malaysia

It’s an especially long way home and not one that was planned long ago but ahead of a busy and rather exciting summer, the very brief look at Malaysia’s absolutely magical tallest mountain was something of a dream. It remains so. 

The last week in Hong Kong passed in a flash, with meetings from figures from all over the cultural landscape, and even saw some unexpectedly beautiful weather. A highlight was re-meeting my long-time (and long-lost, one could say) collaborator, pianist and composer Michael Stephen Brown, in Hong Kong for a couple of recitals with violinist Arnaud Sussmann for Premiere Performances HK, hence this rather happy photo. It rekindled a little tiny bit of faith in Hong Long as a cultural centre after plenty of reasons to extinguish the notion. And even with some disappointments, there are triumphs. Some final revisions to the new String Quartet no. 2 (2024) for Quatuor Arod and final preparations for the premiere of Otherhood (2022) in October in Helsinki, not to mention some good movement on other things, gives me some added hope in myself, too.

I’ll be in California for a short, but meaningful, period. I never planned to segment my life so deliberately into hemispheres of family (United States) and work (Europe and Asia) but it just happened that way and perhaps it may yet change one day again. One could do far worse, be far less inspired, less free, less barely a 3 hour flight from tropical paradise and so on- I am very lucky and look desperately forward to all the wonderful things to come.