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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.
9 May 2024
Taipei, Taiwan
Taiwan is, simply put, a fascinating place. Taipei itself doesn’t look much like anything- take out Taipei 101, that iconic super-skyscraper, and it could be pretty much any major city in Japan (not so much China, in fact), enclosed by a very scenic ring of impossibly lush, green mountains: nondescript mid-rise buildings, wide streets, clean sidewalks, brilliant food on every corner. I’m not trying to focus on the cityscape, really, but it is a very interesting place to arrive to, because it straddles cultures and geographies, even eras, for few places get the mix of tradition and modernity quite as effortlessly as here. But this is not a sightseeing trip- today, I feel quite fortunate to get to hear the first notes of a really miniature String Quartet (2024), my second, written for, and commissioned by, the Paris-based Quatuor Arod.
Interesting to meet in Taiwan, then, when Europe would be rather more logical, but then, Arod is an incredibly international ensemble, with performances spanning continents on a weekly basis. I can take some credit for inviting them to Hong Kong two years ago, their first time in the city, but the rest of the credit lies entirely with them and the interesting initiative to commission ‘encore’ works inspired by their ever-changing repertoire. In my case, I chose an especially unusual piece, the Szymanowski Second String Quartet and created what might be called a reconnection of the entire thing: the same materials, even the same melody, but simultaneously different, maybe even unrecognisable. But paired on the same concert, with the brilliant musicianship of this ensemble, it might just connect in some unexpected ways.
Next week, I was meant to be already on the way to the UK for a residency on the large-scale project with Manchester International Festival, but this is temporarily, or perhaps indefinitely, now postponed, no fault due to the festival whatsoever. It is commonly accepted practice in the music world not to bite the hand that feeds you, and perhaps not even the hand that doesn’t- in this case, we’ll just have to see how it goes.
29 April 2024
Kolkata, India
The end of the teaching semester in Hong Kong was an especially busy time, and escaping the first possible moment at a very early Saturday morning to Myanmar hardly made things feel easier- within that last twenty-four hours, moving out of my apartment (of six years!) on top of my academic responsibilities made for a rather harried start to ‘the vacation’. And, indeed, Myanmar is hardly a conventional vacation idea right now, given the sanctions, skirmishes, bombings, and sweeping poverty over this once-prosperous country. But then one has to see for oneself! And indeed, while the state of things in the nation’s cultural heartland around Mandalay have deteriorated considerably since my last visit in 2022, sipping a seven-year-old French Viognier in the palatial surroundings of Yangon’s best French restaurant, barely steps away from the former prime minister’s mansion where she endured over a decade of house arrest, remains a very strange picture in my memory.
This has been a slightly unpredictable time professionally, and while there are exciting things on the horizon, there are frustrations, too. The music industry is an exciting and rapidly changing thing but it is also deeply precarious. And while one can often rely on the good sense and kindness of others, it is a worrying trend in Hong Kong that the artistic and institutional leadership is trending in a worryingly provincial direction. It compels me to wonder whether there’s more to do elsewhere, at least in terms of planning projects with reliable partners. More on this later, hopefully, with positive updates!
I’m back to Hong Kong already later this week and excited to start new things in Taipei with the Quatuor Arod and later this year with the world premiere of Otherhood (2022) with Iris Oja, Martti Anttila, and Anna Kuvaja– in both cases, just waiting for some dates. These are perhaps slightly smaller-scale things but maybe a thirty-minute song cycle incorporating the latest tech and a new quartet for one of the world’s best groups are very much worth some excitement. As for the past, searingly hot days in beautiful but weary Myanmar, it is a temporary reprieve and pleasure to be in civilisation, and to move on to the next challenges.
5 April 2024
Oakland, CA, USA
It’s been an entire two and a half months since I last visited home, but it feels far longer than that, considering how packed the winter and spring have been so far. Aside from finishing the new string quartet for Quatuor Arod, I’ve been preparing various projects for further performances, especially developing The Once and Future (2021) into a more mature direction in terms of staging and costumes- a must in advance of its European premiere in 2025 in Antwerp, Belgium. At the same time, some things have slipped in terms of completion, like sharing the Vivacissimo (2023) performance (perhaps not until May! though it will also very likely come to Europe later this year), and the online project for Hong Kong Ballet, which will probably only release in the summer. But I’m also well aware that good things can’t be rushed, and one is only remembered for ‘what’, not ‘when’.
This is a brief trip home; I’ll already be back in Hong Kong for the culmination of the academic year next week, and, indeed, Hong Kong figures into many of the upcoming weeks of spring. At the same time, I’ll be back in Myanmar towards the end of the month for a long-awaited (though brief) trip; my first, in December 2022, was fascinating and moving, with the country in the depths of a civil war that, now, seems to have only regressed. At the same time, the incredible and gracious culture and the dependence on any foreign visitors to support a famished population lends a particular urgency to a trip. It’s just impossible to predict where things will go from here, but the beauty of the place is eternal, and profound.
Turning attention away from merely planning things to creative work once more, I’ll finally be working on the music for an interactive project-collaboration with Jeffrey Shaw, Katharina Schmitt, and Christoph Wirth, which will, let’s say, ‘soft’-premiere in Hong Kong this autumn but will get a proper run in Germany in 2025 as well (it threatens to be an especially busy year!). Lots of news regarding future performances for the summer and autumn will come in the next update which, hopefully, will find me in less of a state of constant jet lag!
21 March 2024
Hong Kong, HKSAR
I am, once more, in between things- in between new works, with the all-too-concise String Quartet no. 2 (2024) finished and to be premiered later this spring by the Quatuor Arod, but not yet at the stage of writing the next, large-scale multidisciplinary work for Manchester International Festival; in between travels, having just returned from a brief but rewarding trip to Delhi and Rajasthan, and looking forward to a return home to the United States for Easter; in between homes, almost, as I’ll be returning my Sham Shui Po apartment at the end of April, and moving to somewhere else, still unknown, in the late summer. It’s a (by definition) tentative place, this in-between, full of anticipation and anxiety but also healthy and exciting: this is where a pivot, a leap forward, takes place, something to turn that buzzing incoherence into a happy whole.
And that anxious excitement also extends into some other realms, like, soon, sharing the video+audio of Vivacissimo (2023) from its world premiere at the tail end of last year, as well as some announcements related to touring The Once and Future (2021) with new staging and costumes in Europe in 2025, as well as, in fact, a schedule of performances for the new String Quartet no 2 for the summer. All that- soon, indeed.
The precious few moments of silence and peace in between the travels, the work that seemingly keeps piling up, creative, entrepreneurial and occasionally academic too, allow a little bit of time for dreaming, too. New approaches to transcending (or, should I say, transgressing?) the classical music boundaries, new ideas for presenting work more ambitiously and fearlessly, not to mention new expectations of work ethic from collaborators and partners- on occasion I realise the privilege of even raising the issue of high standards and values which Hong Kong offers and many other places don’t. Even when so much of the city’s cultural potential is compromised or even buried by the unfortunate state of the cultural leadership, there’s so much that’s exciting, that’s good, that’s practically revolutionary. I’d rather be nowhere else.
6 March 2024
Hong Kong, HKSAR
The light outside appeared as if through a sepia filter, and a heavy mist, the kind that would stick to one’s lips, traveled horizontally along the sidewalks and hugged each creaking, cracking building in Sham Shui Po. Two mornings in a row, we had 100% humidity. And earlier this week, I finished a string quartet that, itself, finished on a B Major chord. Whither happiness, or contentment, or at the very least- finality? B Major is, after all, such a bright key. It makes D look dour in comparison, and C- horribly banal. But the piece is done, and it will soon be printed, too, once its billion notes, too many in the treble clef, even in the cello part, find space on the digital page. And this spring, it will even receive its world premiere with the superb Quatuor Arod.
These sticky, stagnant mornings actually have felt strangely fresh, sandwiched in between cool, windy days and nights. Or this image of Angkor Wat at dawn, or barely a bit later (since I couldn’t bother to wake up in perfect time, and insisted on breakfast at a civilised pace). In between giant projects, interdisciplinary genre-busting things, groundbreaking this and revolutionary that, until one gets tired of the marketing-speak, it’s just nice to write chamber music once in a while. It’s even nicer to do it for true friends.
Then we come back to the groundbreaking and revolutionary anyway; the wind insists on blowing through the mist, no matter how curious it is. We are in the final stage of editing, post-production, and CGI on the digital work for Hong Kong Ballet that, together with Giorgio Biancorosso, choreographer Yuh Egami, dancer Shen Jie, and the incredible artistry of Anandi Bhattacharya and Joby Burgess, we recorded in November. But the digital aspect is a work of creative production on its own. It is also sort of impossible to imagine precisely how it might go. Like any decent work of art, though, the unpredictability, the non-commodification, is why to do it in the first place. It may end in its own, proverbial, B Major. In a few weeks’ time, the world will see it.
