The extraordinary (and, in terms of the Taiwanese contemporary music scene, extraordinarily important) C-Camerata Taipei have commissioned me to compose a new fifteen minute work for them, for soprano, guitar, sheng, pipa and ‘cello. A reduced version for trio of sheng, pipa and ‘cello will first be premiered in a concert titled Die Pipa: Volksmusik aus Taiwan im Spiegel Unserer Zeit, at the Passauer Saiten festival in Passau, Germany, and the full quintet version (with added soprano and guitar) will be premiered in the C-Camerata International Festival for Contemporary Music “Crossing Sounds”, at Forum Music Taipei on March 30 2024.
This is an extremely exciting prospect for me, while also being a great challenge, and I have already eagerly embarked on the process of researching, studying, collecting and collating and reflecting, as well as choosing a text for the soprano part. I have a working title: War South of the Great Wall. I also provisionally have a text: a poem, or two poems, by Tang dynasty poet Li Bai (Li Po). The concept of the piece is that it is a sort of dramatic concert aria-cum-chamber concerto. This will be my main creative preoccupation over the next four months.
It has also been very pleasant to be invited to conduct a new piece in a concert given by the Korean ensemble Geori in the same “Crossing Sounds” Festival in Taipei.