Taichung Chamber Choir commission: first rehearsals of sketches (2022.3-4)

I’m excited to be working with the prize-winning Taichung Chamber Choir and their charismatic conductor I-Chen Yang to compose a new piece for her multimedia choral programme 「原粹」（yuan cui）, which translates directly as something like “original” or “pure”– though perhaps “original essence” expresses best the atmosphere of this interesting performance.  I-Chen Yang has invited me to rehearse and conduct my piece, about which prospect I’m very excited.  I composed some sketches which I took to the choir to try out.  This was an extremely useful learning experience, especially in terms of the intricacies of setting Chinese text, and calibrating the level of difficulty appropriate to these excellent singers.  It also initiated a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion about the meaning of “original essence”, especially what it might mean culturally for a Taiwanese person, which led us into a comparison of Western and Eastern philosophy.  This is an extremely challenging project, but it presents the opportunity to compose something with visualisation or other extra-musical elements, as well as to engage with these philosophical and cultural ideas which challenge my own conceptual assumptions.

Previous posts on this project:

Taichung Chamber Choir Commission (forthcoming: 2023) 台中室內合唱團的委約（擬：2023年首演）