Tuesday Night New Music: Jia, Cao, Kim, Gu, Ha, Duan, Yao

Tiangfang Jia | The Touch III (2022)

Program note

The Touch is my series of music and technology works. The Touch III is composed for two performers. These performers touch each other’s skin, which completes a circuit and generates an electric signal. The signal then triggers music. In The Touch III, the floor is equipped with a conductive metal foil arranged in the shape of Tai Chi. The black area and the white area are connected to a circuit. When the performers touch each other, the circuit is completed and music is generated.                     
– Tiangfang Jia

Xiaowei Cao | Four Sentences (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Not Speak) (2022)

Program note

I was instructed not to speak, so the musical becomes non-musical.
Words become metaphors.
Boxes are messengers.
And the unreachable is amplified.                                           
– Xiaowei Cao

Jaegone Kim | Paperecord (2022)

Program note

The United States Environmental Protection Agency states paper and cardboard materials represent the largest component of municipal solid waste.        
–Jaegone Kim

Didi Gu | A Portrait, a Relic, and My Green Striped Dress (2022)

Program note

For my grandpa Yishan Gu, my grandma Shufang Zhang, and my grandma Fanglian Yu.                                                                                                         
– Didi Gu

Changjin Ha | from Viola Sonata No. 1 (2018)

II. Lento inquieto
III. Innocently and scattering

Yuxin Duan | Music for Solo Cello (2022)

Program note

Two short movements of Music for Solo Cello are each composed on some principles of the sonata form. Intervals (seconds and thirds) in Adagio non troppo substitute for key areas and develop, through designed "modulations", into other, purer intervals. Allegro molto, on the other hand, retains tone centers but avoids consistency outside a rondo theme, hence complementing absent principles from the first movement. The return of a first movement theme then tries to capture this relationship and hint at a greater sonata form themed by its very formal elements. I also try to explore the richness of texture and color on the instrument through formal choices. 
– Yuxin Duan

Yi Yao | Heaving Mountain in the Sea (2022)

Program note

Heaving mountain in the sea,
Whale, I heard you
Grieving.
Great whale, crying for your life,
Crying for your kind, I knew
How we would use
Your dying:
Lipstick for our painted faces,
Polish for our shoes.
Tumbling mountain in the sea,
Whale, I heard you
Calling.
Bird-high notes, keening, soaring:
At their edge a tiny drum
Like a heartbeat.
We would make you
Dumb.
In the forest of the sea,
Whale, I heard you
Singing.
Singing to your kind.
We’ll never let you be.
Instead of life we choose
Lipstick for our painted faces,
Polish for our shoes.

--Kit Wright, The Song of the Whale