2018

Workhop and meetings in Hong Kong

Once or twice yearly I teach workshops in English at Soundtherapy Hong Kong. This time I also managed to have a side-meeting with theatre director Ho, through Taiwan dancer/director/improviser WU Wentsui. I attended the rehearsal for the piece which she joined, a fascinating play where everything (text, movement, sound) was improv – my cup of tea! Next day he took us to see a very interesting performance in public spaces, arranged by some of his students.

Workshop Catch the Spirit of the Moment in Jianshi

VISIT TO BALI

We made a family trip to Bali, a destination that has been on my wish-list since I was young (my great-grandmother was Indonesian, but not Balinese). Our whole family first took gamelan classes with the wonderful musicians and dancers of Cudamani, right before they left for a tour in the USA. These were our teachers and here is also some audio. You can see some videos of them here).

Balinese gamelan melody Bilak as taught by the Cudamani musicians to our family. Repetitive, but full of mistakes this first time around!

Later we went to the North where we stayed at the Suryanamaskar Ashram of I Gede Budasi. He showed us around to many interesting places there, including gong makers.

I also heard the wonderful sound of flutes attached to birds while they fly around, producing sometimes a higher sometimes a lower pitch, and these two pitches waving up and down due to the Doppler effect. See this video with explanations. The bird sounds in the first 30 seconds are quite faint and you can hardly see them (tiny spots in the center of the film, only in the beginning)!

(The references I make here are the book A House in Bali by composer Colin Mc Phee and a film produced in China in the 1980s by Jack Body. The documentary film was online on Jack’s personal website until recently but Jack whom I worked with at several occasions and who was a great inspiration to me, passed away in 2015 and his website is now defunct.)

LUCHO LIBRARY CONCERT

Frequent collaborator and tireless Taiwanese impro promotor LEE Shih Yang organised another event with soprano LIN Chien Chun, himself and cellist CHEN Yu Long. We played traditional music from Tuva and Holland, contemporary works by Georg Asperghis (1945-) and Chien-Chun’s late father-in-law, Li Tai Shiang (1941-2014) and various improvisations.

TEACHING/PERFORMING IN SEOUL

I received an invitation to teach at the Seoul National University’s Department of Music by ethnomusicologist Hilary Finchum-Sung. A very rewarding experience with many students and professors/musicians/composers. Quite surprisringly, they taught me at least as much as I taught them. For several consecutive days they showed me a wealth of Korean musical instruments and playing styles. Part of these demonstrations led to collaborative work and to a final performance with students.

After that, I did a performance at Dotolim with pieces from my new solo program, run by curator Jin Sangtae. Places like Dotolim are decisively 21st century, with a focus on all sorts of experimental digital/elecronic and semi-analog art, like Sangtae’s own use of the noise produced by PC hard drives as a sound source. I thought it’d be better to bring my Kaoss pad so I would fit in with the mostly electronic acts. However, it turned out my Kaoss Pad had broken down so I had no choice but to go completely acoustic. I even left the microphone for what it was every now and then.

Thanks to a chance meeting in Tuva in 2016, I got to know a great Korean theatre director, Seong Kyun Yoo. We stayed in touch and he now hooked me up with a young pansori singer for an intimate evening of solo and some duo music at a semi-private gathering. After the performances, the host had arranged for Korean barbecue and other delicacies, a real treat.

I left greatly inspired and with a sense of invogoration by the Korean spirit in which shamanism and great rhythmic and dynamic complexity form the roots of a dynamic performing arts culture.

TYVA KYZY IN TAIWAN

Through the National Center for Traditional Arts in Taipei I was able to bring Tyva Kyzy over for their 20th Anniversary World Tour.

RECORDING WITH OORBEEK

ANNUAL AROMA/MUSIC PILGRIMAGE TO CORSICA

It is becoming sort of a tradition to move to Corsica with all of the family, to lead a Canjune aromatour with a large music program. This year for the first time we witnessed the harvest of Immortelle. We also heard music in Pigna, the picturesque town in the Balagna, from several singers of A Cumpagna, Two of them I met in 1989 when I was their tourguide in the Netherlands and then the year after, when I visited them. Nicole Casalonga (also at the Dutch 1989 tour) led a workshop for us and made all our Chinese travellers sing Corsican songs. During the half-hour stop we made in Ile Rousse I immediately ran into old friend Battista Acquaviva, no doubt the best known female Corsican singer nowadays, ever since she made it big in The Voice. She is now having a very different kind of carreer than her father Nando Acquaviva, who until recently sang and played actively.

SOUND JOURNEY: TUVA #2

For the second time I organised a tour to Tuva for travellers from Asia and Europe, together with Choduraa Tumat. Lots of throat singing, some wrestling, abundant nature, two shamanic ceremonies, festivals, and great food.

CURATING EZENGI and FOUR VOICES FROM TUVA FOR ASIAN-PACIFIC TRADITIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

I was invited by the National Center for Traditional Arts in Taiwan to select musicians from Tuva for this year’s edition of the Asian-Pacific Traditional Arts Festival. I selected four soloists to play their own work and one young group, Ezengi, directed by Mengi Mongush. Photos below from Four Voices of Tuva and Andrei Öpei.

FOCUS ON HOLLAND CONCERT in TAIPEI

How wonderful to put Dutch improvisers in the spotlight during this latest edition of the on-going Taipei International Improvised Music Festival! With Mark Alban Lotz, Wilbert de Joode, Felicity Provan and Rogier Hornman from Holland, and LEE Shih Yang, TUNG Chaoming, Min-Yen Terry and Li Chin from Taiwan – plus me somewhere in between I guess.

Photos by To Hong Bond Chen.