Day 1 Symposium Archive
Brett Stemple, Peter Tornquist
View the opening address and performance by Peter Tornquist, Dean of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (YST), and Brett Alan Stemple, Vice Dean and Symposium Convenor. Featuring a performance by Yang Shuxiang (violin), Lee Yu Ru (percussion), and Abigail Sin (piano)
Repertoire
Lou Harrison: Varied Trio for Violin, Percussion and Piano
1. Gending
2. Bowl Bells
3. Dance
Grace Chan
Bells are an ancient analogue form of mass music and soundscape generation. The COVID-19 pandemic, accelerated a global digital transformation within bell and carillon culture. Notably, acceptance, prevalence and increased sophistication of live streaming and other digital platforms abolished the need for the audience to travel to a static physical site to hear these musical monuments. This presentation explores the implication of this newfound “mobility” within the digital landscape for performer, audience, and musical monument. In the digital and virtual realms, bells and bell tower no longer just serve their city, temple community or University but are able to resonate untethered from geo-positional cultural restrictions.
Ning Hui See
Drawing upon biographies, gender studies, music theory, Clara Schumann’s concertising strategies, and audience research, See’s autoethnography situates Schumann’s Piano Sonata within 4 concerts See programmed and performed. Through each concert, See analyses the processes of thematising, repertoire selection, interpretation, performance, and audience engagement. This presentation mainly focuses on an all-women composers’ programme: Schumann, Beach, Hensel, Price, Koh, and Saariaho. Emergent findings demonstrate the multivalent relationship between the performer’s sense of identity, agency, musical and social ideologies, performance phenomenology, and attitudes toward audiences.
Miao Kaiwen, Frances Lee, Benedict Ng
How might the usage of different art forms mediate collaboration in a chamber music setting and enhance the articulation of personal resonance as performers? As a clarinet-viola-piano trio, Miao, Lee and Ng take Robert Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen as a case study and explore how other modes of artistic expression can be effectively integrated into the rehearsal process as a tool for communication and self-reflection, and simultaneously allow them to reinterpret the title’s connection to storytelling by situating this piece in their current time and place. Their presentation addresses their findings through this collaborative process and culminate in a performance of the complete work.
Bernard Lanskey
As time passes, it becomes increasingly difficult to process any work without hearing resonances of the music and lives of others. Although the presentation is ostensibly about one work, there will be resonances of other reflections of the sea in a presentation as much about the crossings of currents and waters of time passing: of people, politics, ecosystems, genres, languages, contexts, cultures; of close resonances, of intercultural archetypes, heard like gongs linking distant shores of Time and Space.
Olga Stezhko
Citizens around the world often fight for their rights and self-determination with little awareness of similar struggles outside of their region. Just as complex nuances of the fight for freedom in Southeast Asian countries have often been oversimplified by the West, circumstances in Belarus are also misunderstood. Overwhelmingly, we are represented as a colony supportive of Russia, even though Belarusians are a nation with a rich history and culture stretching back over a thousand years.
Building out from a currently developing project ‘Blooming’, this presentation focuses on how collaborative artistic research can help to bridge such gaps in mutual awareness and foster international solidarity.
Morse Percussion collaborates with the YST Percussion Studio in a joint concert featuring the intricate rhythms and sonorous harmonies of minimalist composer Steve Reich.
Led by Morse Percussion founders Derek Koh and Joachim Lim, they will be presenting eclectic pieces of music ranging from Drumming to Electric Counterpoint.
Repertoire
Steve Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood, Drumming Part I, Nagoya Marimbas, & Electric Counterpoint
Introducing the Final Chapter to ‘The Art of War by Calista Liaw’—a highly-acclaimed multidisciplinary production that has enthralled full-house audiences at the Esplanade in its first two editions. This extraordinary series continues its exploration of curated philosophies from Sun Tzu’s renowned classic, 孙子兵法, offering a utopian fusion of contemporary Chinese chamber music, movement art, and haute couture—a visual spectacle unlike anything seen before in Singapore.
In its third edition, the program revisits the World Premiere of four commissioned Chinese chamber works titled ‘计Laying Plans’, ‘战Waging War’, ‘省Introspection’, and ‘翌March On’. Each movement is a tribute to selected quotes from Sun Tzu’s genius, and a metaphoric narrative of Calista’s relationship with Art and Life, performed by an outstanding team of established artists of diverse disciplines. An emblem of her deep-rooted passion for Chinese arts and culture, ‘The Art of War’ series serves as her inaugural masterpiece to tell her story.
Repertoire
1. 计 Laying Plans by CHUA Zi Tao
2. 战 Waging War by Estene CHEONG
3. 省 Introspection by LIN Ssu Ting
4. 翌March On by TOH Yan Ee
A transcultural exploration by Red Dot Baroque & Open Score Project
Repertoire
Prelude: Kompang procession
1. Stefano Landi: Passacaglia della Vita
2. Urat Mongolian Folk Tune: Swan Goose
3. Azrin Abdullah: Yearning (Samai Nahawand)
4. Salomone Rossi: Sonata in dialogo
5. Barbara Strozzi: Che si può fare
6.Two Hindustani Airs from the Plowden Manuscript, MS 380 (1787-8)
7. Jugalbandi on Uccellini’s Bergamasca
8. Teochew string-poem music: Lotus Out of Water
9. John Playford: Divisions on “Paul’s Steeple”
10. Girolamo Frescobaldi: Se l’aura spira
The Seventh Angel, for brass ensemble was specially arranged for the YST Big Brass Ensemble to be performed at Flowing Resonances 2023, by composer and YST composition faculty Chen Zhangyi. The original The Seven Angels for organ was released on Centaur records, and originally premiered in 2019 as part of YST’s Voyage Festival performed by organist Phoon Yu.
Project Re-Sonating was conceived by Vice-Dean and Composer, Prof Ho Chee Kong, in collaboration with Lin Xiangning and YST students, Jeremy Ng, George Leong, Adam Sharawi and Lai Jo-wei. The concept is using the metal rails of the building as instruments together with live-sound electronic manipulation to create resonances within the building space. The music materials are based on the morse code for YST20 and incorporates a poem by the composer in celebration of all the music performed and created by YST over the last 2 decades. The poem is titled Flowing.
What's next?
YST CONSERVATORY
National University of Singapore
3 Conservatory Drive
Singapore 117376
