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Young Malaysians - Interview
with Adeline Wong
Adeline Wong stands with the vanguard
of a new Malaysian music. She might also help classical
music's image makeover. Off the Edge magazine speaks to
Wong in the lead up to Merdeka Day.
Meet Adeline Wong, whose highly colourful musical language
has found advocates from as far as Australia and Europe.
The KL'ite who has taught at Akademi Seni Kebangsaan and
Sedaya College, has written for theatre, film, orchestra
and premiered her cello concerto Snapshots in Kuala
Lumpur in 2005.
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Rebels Without A Pause
- Interview with Kok Siew Wai from EMACM
Audio anarchy in Kuala Lumpur -
Off The Edge interviews Kok Siew Wai, vocal artist from
the Experimental Musicians and Artists Co-operative Malaysia
(EMACM).
He lets his horn rip and bizarre squeaks and split notes
rattle the foundations of what used to be liquid Disco,
and like the call of the piper, the merry band of noisemakers
joins in with their own instruments. Chaos. Out of the
din, the demure figure of Kok Siew Wai, the lone rose
among the musical thorns, starts to vocalise her bloodcurdling
cries, building up to a vocal seizure of the highest decibels.
They are the EMACM, plotting their heinous sonic activities
to demolish every preconception of music KLites hold dear.
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On The Quiet - Interview
with Ng Chong Lim
No vissi d'arte for pianist-composer
Ng Chong Lim, who lives a life beyond art. Here is an
Off The Edge magazine interview with a composer with HEART
published in 2007.
Malaysia has a fair share of notable concert pianists,
but pianist-composers are a little harder to find, especially
if you've been under the radar as Ng Chong Lim has been
over the years. Quietly performing his remarkable piano
works in festivals abroad, Ng showed that he was no mere
dabbler as he produced one of the most powerful orchestral
works heard at the Dewan Filharmonik, Xiang.
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An Enlightened
Journey - Johan Othman's Conference of the Birds reviewed
Lena Lie reviews Penang's first
ever contemporary Malaysian opera performance
Classical music enthusiasts in the Northern region were
in luck in November 09 when Johan Othman boldly shared
with the world his latest creative opus. This artistic
product has evolved from his deep affinity for music drama
and literature with a high level of spiritual and philosophical
themes. Conference of the Bird, a Farid ud-Din Attar's
poem, received a modern day interpretation in the form
of a contemporary opera by Othman.
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Flaunt The Imperfection
- Interview with Chinary Ung
Impeccable is overrated, says Cambodian-American
composer Chinary Ung. Off The Edge interviews the veteran
American-Cambodian composer in Bangkok at the Thailand
International Composition Festival 2008
IN 1940S CAMBODIA, a young boy found himself entranced
by the sounds of village folk music that echoed from the
distance across the paddy fields. At the time it must
have been hard to imagine that one day he would be at
the forefront of the Asian contemporary music scene in
a faraway land. Chinary Ung’s journey to his current
position as Professor of Music at University of California,
San Diego, has been a long one and he is ready to admit
that it has been fraught with hardship.
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Of Prophets And
Bandits - Off The Edge interviews Slamet A Sjukur
Father of Indonesian contemporary
classical music Slamet Sjukur speaks candidly about Tari
Pendet and life in general.
Slamet A Sjukur is generally considered the father of
contemporary Indonesian music. Born in Surabaya in 1935,
Sjukur studied music at the Conservatoire National Supérieur
de Musique de Paris with distinguished composers like
Olivier Messiaen and Henri Dutilleux. A leading figure
in the promotion of new music in Indonesia, Sjukur founded
the Asosiasi Komponis Indonesia in 1994 and taught many
of the important new generation composers like Tony Prabowo
and Otto Siddharta.
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Young
At Art - Young Composers Competition at the KLCMF 09
The KL Contemporary Music Festival
brought together for the first time the cream of the crop
of the region's young composers for a fascinating finals
concert on 29 Nov 09. Jury members Johan Othman and Dieter
Mack, and competition finalists share their thoughts.
On 29 November 09 a landmark concert took place
at the KL Contemporary Music Festival 09. The region's
first concerted effort in bringing together young talent
from the South East Asian countries yielded an exciting
evening of diverse voices of astonishing quality, selected
from an overwhelming 60 plus overall submissions to the
call for scores from participants from all over the region,
as far as Hanoi.
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Lab Report - Learning
The Art Of Composing
In her report on the recent Manila
Composers Lab 09 at University of Philippines young Malaysian
composer Chong Huey Ching gives a candid account of her
experiences, pitfalls and lessons learnt
The College of Music, University of the Philippines
held its inaugural Manila Composers Lab from 4 to 11 June
2009, organised by the Department of Composition and Theory.
This experimental workshop provided young composers with
a chance to work directly with musicians and experiment
with the practicality of woodwind instruments. Chong Huey
Ching gives us the inside story.
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Birds Of A Feather:
Johan Othman's upcoming opera premiere
A sneak peek at Johan Othman's upcoming
opera premiere Conference of the Birds
Opera fans will have a treat at the end of the
year when Penang-based composer Johan Othman unveils his
long-awaited opus Conference of the Birds, an electroacoustic
opera which will be staged at Wawasan Open University,
Penang, on 20 - 22 November 2009, produced by Five Arts
and James Lochhead and directed by Chee Sek Thim.
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The
Stoic Epicure
Award-winning young pianist Wong
Shuen Da proves that having two personalities is better
than one
Boldly going where no young pianist in Malaysia
had gone before, HSBC Piano Competition 08 Finalist Wong
Shuen Da, imposing through his towering build but affecting
for his proportionate shyness, stepped up to the challenge
and blew the audience away with his confident and poetic
performance.
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Roots and Routes
of a New Music Composition from the Philippines
Jonas Baes speaks about "the
genesis and the eventual protean transformations of a
new music composition"
Dr Jonas Baes comes from a distinguished, and unparalleled,
lineage of composers-ethnomusicologists-thinkers that
are the trademark of the Filipino contemporary music community
that has a special place in the contemporary scene in
South East Asia. He discusses his concepts using his composition
Patangis Buwaya as illustration.
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A Malaysian tribute
to the Gaza victims
Ng Shyh Poh may well be the first
Malaysian contemporary music composer to have his work
performed at a popular concert in the country.
Young composer Ng Shyh Poh has the honour of being
perhaps the first Malaysian contemporary music composer
to have his work performed at a popular concert in the
country. His choir piece A Land Far Away performed
as part of a concert raising funds for Gaza humanitarian
aid at the Istana Budaya on 1 Feb 2009.
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Impressions Of
A Crying Crocodile: Dr Jonas Baes Presents Patangis-Buwaya
at University Malaya
UM music student and young composer
Chong Huey Ching shares her impressions of Dr Jonas Baes'
Patangis-Buwaya at University Malaya in October
08.
Dr Jonas Baes composed Patangis-Buwaya (….and
the crocodile weeps...), a work for four wind instruments,
from January to March 2003 during the period of his fieldwork
among the indigenous "internal refugees" of
the Philippines, where he saw the suffering especially
of the Iraya-Mangyan people with whom he was closely connected
since the 1980's. The work recently received its unique
Malaysian performance at Dr Baes' presentation at UM.
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Blood, Sweat and Tears
- Reflections On The Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Fest
2008
Indonesian composer Andreas Arianto
Yanuar sums up the significance of the recent contemporary
music festival in Yogya in October 2008.
Blood, sweat and tears of the organizing committee
was paid off in that every year since 2004 this festival
has "infected" the local public not only with
an awareness, but also a curiosity and attention to new
music performances.
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Bird's Nest In
The Spring
New Zealand composer and pianist
Ross Carey blogs about his Great Adventure across China
as he headed for the Beijing Congress of the International
Association Of Women In Music this April, a couple
of laps ahead the Olympians.
Beijing in the year 2008, a large international gathering
of specialised practitioners who have trained for years,
pushing mind, body and soul to their utmost and devoted
to their respective disciplines- what else but the Olympics
and Paralympics? Well, the Congress ofthe International
Association of Women in Music (IAWM), that's what!
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Rain Of Wisdom
Prof Chinary Ung discusses the dilemma
facing the young Asian composer in his lecture delivered
at Burapha University during the IV Thailand International
Composers Festival in July 2008
"Composition is a western tool, so you have to be trained
in thse tools. But then you have to be liberated from the
training. That is the spiritual direction that I propose
you should take," advises Prof Ung as he illustrates
from his experience how he applied Asian principles to the
art of composing music.>>
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Northern Exposure
- Contemporary Music In Thailand
The fourth Thailand International Composers Festival brings
together some of the finest Thai composers The
IV Thailand International Composers Festival, organised
by Thai composer Narong Prangcharoen in July 2008 at Bangsaen
University, saw a gathering of Thai composers young and
old, signalling that the Thai new music scene would go
from strength to strength. >>
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Stranger Than
Fiction
Malaysian composer from Melaka takes
choral music where no Malaysian choral group has ever
gone before.
Ng Shyh Poh created a series of graphic scores for his
choral composition for the recent 6th Young Singers Choral
Festival this June. Intriguingly titled Science Fiction,
the work received enthusiastic response from the performers,
who have since started to view choral music in a new light.
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Asian
Threnodies
South East Asian composers remember the victims of tragedy
In the wake of recent tragic natural disasters,
particularly that of the Sichuan earthquake and the cyclone
that hit Myanmar, it is perhaps fitting to remember the
victims of the misfortune in the way that composers have
done over the past generations. >>
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Focus
on Korea
Korea's active new music scene keeps Yun Isang's memory
alive
Not surprisingly, the legacy of the
strong father figure that Yun Isang casts over the younger
generation of Koeran composers is a powerful one, and
it has created one of Asia's most vibrant contemporary
music cultures.
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Liberating The Ramayana
Sinta Wullur's new gamelan opera
brings a fresh approach to the genre
Bringing the Ramayana epic, and indeed the entire
tradition of performance that it has spawned in South
East Asian performance traditions, has been a problematic
one for the Western instrumental medium. Sinta Wullur
is a pioneering composer from Indonesia who has explored
various avenues of Indonesian tradition and Western composition
in her home base of the Netherlands, and it seems she
has found a winning formula in her lastest gamelan opera.
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South By
South East
Exploring the contemporary piano music
of Indonesia
Indonesia's contemporary music scene has been slowly brewing
for over the past decades. As in Malaysia, information about
the music scene is scattered and sporadic, but no less distinguished.
This chapter from Siagian's dissertation offers an excellent
introduction to the music scene of our southerly neighbour
and helps to put some perspective into the development of
art music in South East Asia. Find out more about the composers
Michael Asmara, Slamet Abdul Sjukur and Ananda Sukarlan
in this concluding part of the series.
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Torrents
From Tragedies
Malaysian piano music and the Bali
Bombing - the sound of tragedy
In Chapter 3 of her dissertation on Malaysian art
music entitled "Selected Solo Piano Works from Contemporary
Malaysian Composers", Siagian examines the music of Tazul
Tajuddin and Tan Chee Hwa. Here she brings together two
aspects of Malaysian music - one contemporary, the other
pedagogical. One memorialising death, the other, celebrating
life.
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Slowly Taking Shape:
Part 2 of Charmaine Siagian's dissertation
on contemporary Malaysian piano music
In the second instalment of Charmaine Blythe Siagian's
dissertation on Malaysian art music for the piano she
turns her attention to the music of Malaysian composer
Ng Chong Lim and his Two Preludes (1999).
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Not
Just Black and White:
A dissertation on contemporary Malaysian
piano music
Such a study is perhaps timely. With the growing
abundance of high quality Malaysian compositions musicological
research can now begin in earnest. Preparing for her Doctorate
of Musical Arts at the University of Oklahoma, Sarawak-born
scholar Charmaine Blythe Siagian has written a
marvellous dissertation on Malaysian and Indonesian composers,
with a focus on the solo piano repertoire. We bring you
an exclusive glimpse into this fascinating document.
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Flashback
1: ACL Festivals Hong Kong 2007 & Wellington 2007
A report from last year's Asian
new music festivals
Malaysian compositions resonated in Hong Kong and
Wellington last year. Here is a recap of the events from
Tazul Tajuddin and CH Loh respectively.
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Flashback
2: Asian new music in the context of the international music
scene
An interview with Prof
Ramon A Santos
Professor Ramon A Santos from the Philippines speaks
to CH Loh about the challenged facing Asian composers today.
The interview was published in Off The Edge April 2007
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