Blog

I visited Heidelberg last week to catch Xia Yuyan’s concert with Jiang Shaofeng at the opening of the CHIME Collection:

It was wonderful to see/hear them both in Germany and also to discuss with Yuyan drafts for our upcoming nanpa/percussion collaboration for September.

I am back from a busy month in China, where I was carrying out research in preparation for upcoming works.

I spent time learning about Nanpa 南琶 from Xia Yuyan for a future piece…

…as well as with Wang Meng, learning more about Nanxiao 南箫 (pictured) and shakuhachi (尺八, 尺六):

I also spent a few days in Hangzhou researching Sanxian 三弦 for a separate project with Professor Chen Jingjing at the Zhejiang Conservatory:

Sylvia Hinz will give the premiere of my alto recorder work this June in Columbia. More information here.

A few photos and the accompanying notes from the premiere of my recent work for two speaking percussionists, performed this past week by Yongyun Zhang & Xinyi Zheng:

“In the furnace, she casts herself as an iron nail…
在炉中，他把自己熔铸成一颗铁钉…”

An Iron Nail 铁钉 explores the poetry of Zheng Xiaoqiong 郑小琼 (b. 1980), a former migrant worker who left Sichuan Province to enter the factories in Guangdong Province. At age twenty-one, she began to write about her experiences. Her poems offer a window into the lives of and conditions faced by factory workers.

“Time…
时间…”

When I visited Xiaoqiong in May 2018, she took me to Dongguan to listen to the sounds of the factories firsthand. Every factory sounds unique: a plastic factory, a hardware factory, an electronics factory…

“Little by little gathering rust,
一点一点积蓄着锈,

Little by little swallowing her up…
一点一点吞噬着…”

This work is dedicated to Zhang Yongyun and to Zheng Xiaoqiong.
April 2019, Beijing.

A photo from last week’s dress rehearsal before the Polish premiere of My shadow forms a resonant shell: