Remy Siu 蕭逸南-New Notations* -for three players

“new notations – for [multi] player” is a real-time interactive digital instrument. The piece asks the players to explore a virtual space via hardware controls, their movement and actions resulting in sound output. A maximum of four players can explore this space together, collaborating with one another to sculpt a sound performance.  

This [three] player version was commissioned by Thin Edge New Music Collective.

Remy Siu 蕭逸南(b.1990) is a composer and new media artist based in Vancouver, BC (located on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied, traditional lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) Nations of the Coast Salish peoples).

Recently, his work has involved the construction of automated and variable performance apparatuses that employ light, sound, software, and the body. He is interested in creating friction and stakes between the performer, the interface, and the system through the use of game mechanics and failure. His output spans chamber music, dance, theatre, installations, and audio-visual work.

He actively creates withHong Kong Exile,Mahaila Patterson-O’Brien,Vicky Chow,Howie Tsui,Theatre Replacement, and others. 

His work has been presented atPuSh International Performing Arts Festival(Vancouver),Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong,The Music Gallery(Toronto),Centre for New Music(San Francisco),Power Station of Art(Shanghai),Vancouver Art Gallery,MUTEK Montreal,artsdepot(London, UK),The International Symposium On Electronic Art, and more.

Remy studied at Simon Fraser University Contemporary Arts with David MacIntyre, Owen Underhill, and Barry Truax. He has also studied with Rodney Sharman.

He is currently the Co-Artistic Director ofHong Kong Exile, and the Director and Manager at theGold Saucer Studio.

During 2017-201X, he will be one of two Composers-in-Residence with theNational Arts Centre Orchestra (Canada). He is currently the Curator-in-Residence atContemporary Musiking Hong Kong.

In 2019, he was nominated for theGaudeamus Award.

www.remysiu.com

Sabrina Schroeder (composition) + Jenna Harris (theatre)

Thruline (2019)*- for piano, cello, violin, percussion, live electronics + actor

Experiment: 2 artists, working in 2 different disciplines (sound and theatre), living 4,207.8 km apart, will spend 2 intensive weeks in a room together in Toronto with 4 musicians. Over the year leading up they've sent each other virtual postcards, videos, links, fragments... all toward knitting together zones of focus that might form their playground for this period. 

TRIPTYCH

Music is a Beautiful Disease (1999) - piano, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion

Five Memos (2006)-piano, clarinet, flute, violin, cello, percussion

Objects in Motion (2019)*-piano, clarinet, flute, violin, cello, percussion

This triptych is comprised of three works for similar chamber ensemble exploring the concert chamber music tradition through instrumental theatre. The works were composed separately, with significant periods of time elapsing between the composition of each one – the first two end on a bit of a question mark from which the next piece begins. They are all written as “generic” chamber works – written in such a way that music prevails in the works, enhanced by lighting and movement. (The first two in the triptych have been successfully recorded and released on CD.) The pieces are a kind of musico-anthropological view of the practice of chamber music expressed through music composition - an attempt to step outside of the academy and practice and ask: What is it, this thing that we do called

chamber music?

The act of playing a musical instrument already presupposes that any posture, movement or behaviour around this activity will privilege the aural event first, as it should do. In classical music, this emphasis on the sounds only is more pronounced than in other musics. It results in a highly stylized form of rituals and “theatre” that characterizes classical music performance, theatre largely invisible to the returning audiences who have grown up participating in this form of art.

My triptych is absolutely not a bold, brave look at the future of this practice - instead, it takes a subtle look at the “normal” activities of chamber music and stretches them a bit…. my pieces are intended to be performed by “any” chamber ensemble with a normal skill set of performance practices and rehearsal time. It is groups like TENMC and projects like this that bring attention to this often-neglected part of our tradition and perhaps point in directions that our field might evolve. Having both their time and a space dedicated to presenting theatre pieces is an exciting opportunity to explore more thoroughly what my pieces suggest.

Composer and music curator Peter Hatch has composed works in a large number of genres, from orchestral and chamber music to instrumental theatre, electroacoustics and installations. Known for his interest in revitalizing the listening experience, Hatch's compositions are both heady and playful, profound and humourous. Theatrical and multi-media elements have been incorporated into many of his works, an interest that has grown from extending traditional concert music performance and in frequent collaborations. 

As well as his compositional work, Peter has been very active as the artistic director of new music ensembles and festivals. He founded NUMUS Concerts in 1985, and the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound in 1998. Peter was Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony from 1999-2003 and Arts and Culture Consultant with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics from 2011 to 2013. From 1985-2017 Peter was a Professor at the Faculty of Music, Wilfrid Laurier University

www.peterhatch.ca