This contemporary music festival, run by an amazing team led by the energetic Korean composer Moon Young HA, is held annually at Mise-En Place, Bushwick, New York.\u00a0 Mise-En chose my proposal for a new work, along with twenty four other composers’ proposals and scores (out of 572 entries), for inclusion in this year’s festival.\u00a0 I shall be very excited to have my first trip to New York, and to work with Ensemble Mise-En on my work,\u00a0Crystal Images II: Beijing Hutongs, Spring ’18<\/em>.<\/p>\n I’m very much looking forward to seeing Professor Benjamin Oliver of the University of Southampton (alma mater of my Masters and PhD years), whose piece has also been accepted for the festival.\u00a0 Congratulations Ben!<\/p>\n (I was surprised they used this passport-style picture of me (eight years old, heavily photoshopped, taken during my exchange visit to Taipei).\u00a0 Next time I’ll make sure I send a more artistic picture.\u00a0 Nonetheless it makes me look implausibly young and fresh which is no bad thing!)<\/p>\n Info on the piece below:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Commissioned by the 2018 Mise-En Festival, for performance Programme Note<\/strong><\/p>\n Crystal Images II: Beijing Hutongs, Spring ’18 is a follow-up piece to\u00a0Crystal Images I: Cardigan Bay, Summer ’15. In the earlier chamber work, I focussed on creating In Crystal Images II I have made another mosaic of sound images, but without video (having discovered\u00a0that the video element actually distracts our attention from the sound). The idea for this kind of non-linear (geometric) musical structure was prompted by a diary entry of Andrey Tarkovsky. He described an idea for a plotless film made-up entirely of long static shots of natural scenes. The drama, or life, of the film, would come out of seeing the constant minute changes in the scene presented: the fluctuating of tree branches, ripples on the still surface of water, mist hanging over a field, and the like.<\/p>\n Crystal Images II is dedicated with love to Cornelia, Dominik, and their son Balthasar. Anecdotally,\u00a0the slight variations in length of the sound images and their various textures derive from the birth dates\u00a0of the three dedicatees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Mise-En Festival 2018 website is up now: https:\/\/festival.mise-en.org\/2018\/index.html This contemporary music festival, run by an amazing team led by the energetic Korean composer Moon Young HA, is held annually at Mise-En Place, Bushwick, New York.\u00a0 Mise-En chose my proposal for a new work, along with twenty four other composers’ proposals and scores (out of…<\/span>Continue Reading “Mise-En Festival 2018 Visiting Composer- Premiere of “Crystal Images II: Beijing Hutongs, Spring ’18””<\/span> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/georgehollowaycomposer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Mise-en-2018.jpg?resize=660%2C1024&ssl=1\")
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\nby Ensemble Mise-En at Mise-En Place, Bushwick, New York, 30th June 2018.
\nDedicated to Cornelia Bogen and Dominik Scheder,
\nin celebration of their marriage,
\nand to Balthasar, in celebration of his birth.<\/p>\n
\nmaximally specific \u201csound images\u201d that evoked motion in motionlessness, changelessness in flux.\u00a0 The\u00a0sound images were paired with similarly \u201cfluctuating\u201d video images (static shots of natural scenes in flux, such as crashing waves, or branches bending in the wind).<\/p>\n
\nThe work presents seven sound images of slightly varying length. In each image, one of the seven performers is taken as the focal point of a \u201cspectral\u201d texture based on a different harmonic series. We hear each image presented in three textures of varying thickness: full group, reduced group, and the focal\u00a0instrument \u201csolo\u201d (more or less). Each image also comprises a fourth \u201ctexture\u201d of silence.<\/p>\n