Full Schedule
Fri 27 Nov
Sat 28 Nov 7pm
Sat 28 Nov 11pm
Sun 29 Nov

As night descends on the city a transformation takes place. We see things in different light, familiar shapes take on new forms, sometimes playful, sometimes menacing. Night distorts reality, or does It reveal it? Find out as the Annexe resonates with an assemblage of electroacoustic works unlike any other that puts a twist in classical music performance. Prepared to be challenged! Leave your batik and dinner jacket at home, and bring your dancing shoes instead.

Programme Notes:

Music is the common language that connects cities and communities. For the first time the many musical languages of our region will be heard at one sitting, and we can at last enjoy their collective harmonies and discords, and explore the diversity and commonality that makes us South East Asian. Guest composer Moritz Eggert lends a German perspective to this concert, in ways that you would never imagine!

Programme

1. Jiradej Setabundhu (Thailand) - Fire for bass clarinet and computer (2007)

2. Jerome Kugan (Malaysia) - Kat & A Shadow for CD playback with poems and illustrations (2009) *

3. Ng Chor Guan (Malaysia) - Polygon for clarinet, bass clarinet, voice and laptop (2009) * (performed by EMACM)

4. Hoh Chung Shih (Singapore) - Frissons for viola and live electronics (2009) *

5. Chong Keat Aun (Ji-An) & Neuyabe (Malaysia) - «thgilnooM akkaH» for CD playback, video & performance art (2009)

6. Goh Lee Kwang (Malaysia) - God Of Small Things for 4 musicians (2009) * (Performed by: Wong Eng Leong, Wong Min Lik, Lim Keh Soon & Tey Beng Tze)

7. Otto Sidharta (Indonesia) - 6ta for laptop (2009) *

8. Boonrut Sirirattanapan (Thailand) - La 3 Rua Reverses for oboe, cello and tape (2009) *

9. Samson Young (Hong Kong) - Ageha. Tokyo for amplified violin, electronics and video

10. Javier Alvarez (Mexico) - Temazcal for Maracas and tape (Leow Pei Yu, percussion)

11. Jiradej Setabundhu (Thailand) - Dancing Queen for audio visual algorithmic composition (2009)

* World premiere

1. Dr Jiradej Setabundhu (Thailand) - Fire

Fire was commissioned by the Nation Multimedia Group for the Concert for the Green Global Village, the concept of which was the four elements water, earth, wind and fire. The piece is based on a sound synthesis concept called granular synthesis, where sound is spliced into many small grains, which in turn are recombined in various ways to create clouds of new timbre, different from, and yet related to the original sound.

In this piece recorded sounds of the performer are spliced into small bits. These grains are controlled in real-time by the algorithm coded in Actionscript and has a general tendency of moving from the first stage to the last (the tenth). This tendency however is offset by a controlled probability that at times reverses the direction. The score, a translation into graphic symbols of selected passages from Mark Z Danielewski's experimental novel House of Leaves, is likewise controlled in real-time by the script and is dependent on which grains are selected. A performer can either resist or support the progression of the piece by tapping various keys on a computer keyboard, an analogy to adding combustibles or water to the fire.

2. Jerome Kugan (Malaysia) - Kat & A Shadow

Jerome Kugan performs two of his MIDI compositions from an unreleased recording entitled Summer Diary, written between 2004 and 2007, and gives it new life using multimedia.

3. Ng Chor Guan (Malaysia) - Polygon

Dots maybe be small,
And easy to draw,
To naked eyes they are fine,
Connected dots become a line.

Lines can be found anywhere,
Some as thin as hair,
Join them up on each end,
Be sure not to intersect them.

The length can be different or same,
Leave no open plane,
The result is no longer a dot,
The new name is called polygon!
(Text by Ian Ding)

4. Dr Hoh Chung shih (Singapore) - Frisson II

shiver; friction; shudder; thrill...

The work is a musical landscape in 2 parts - LEFT up and DOWN right - for one (or more players) to explore, a game consisting of 2 grids of musical modules, each independent, yet sequenced in time. Each performance is a joint creation by the performers as they wander through the imaginary musical spaces that I have set up. I explore the acoustic nature of the violin through the distorted lens of DSP environment created by Max, MSP.

5. Goh Lee Kwang (Malaysia) - God Of Small Things

Goh takes small and simple sounds from daily life's objects and brings them into attention.

6. Otto Sidharta (Indonesia) - 6ta

An unexplainable explanation:

This piece is composed specially for the KLCMF 09. It uses important elements of the city as materials, but those elements are not easily recognised because of their transformation and manipulation. Like water on the river, flowing but not finding or remembering the way to come back.

7. Boonrut Sirirattanapan (Thailand) - La 3 Rua Reversed

This piece is based on a Thai traditional song called Rua, which literally means Roll. This song is normally played 3 times and Thai musicians refer to it as Rua Sam La which means Roll 3 times as a farewell. What I've done with that song was to reverse and distort its melody by using oboe and cello runs in competition with each other until they reach a core note of the traditional Rua melody. By that arrival point, the processed audio of my version of Thai Rua in Thai tuning will be triggered and mixed with the acoustic sound. It will return like this 3 times with different colours and intensities.

8. Samson Young (Hong Kong) - Ageha. Tokyo

Ageha is Japanese for 'swallowtail butterfly.' It is also the name of one of the largest nightclubs in Tokyo city. Ageha.Tokyo was completed in March 2007 for violinist Olivia De Prato. The violin strings are de-tuned to E, B4, B4 quartertone sharp, and B3. I like to feed text through the Google Translate machine, I find the mistakes and inaccuracies to be intensely poetic:

Slow Vomit (In Tokyo)
it is the end of the bed
between them
the small animal
feeds tender red smelling musk
babies
it is a piece of their body
embracing the light
arts and navel
to the boundary line
in a safe area they can call slow vomit
as suction
deep memories
and suction

- Original Chinese poem by Ron Lam, translated by Google Translate machine, edited by Samson Young

9. Javier Alvarez (Mexico) - Temazcal

The title of this work stems from the Nahuatl (ancient Aztec) word literally meaning water that burns. The maracas material throughout Temazcal is drawn from traditional rhythmic patterns found in most Latin-American music, namely those from the Caribbean region.

Commonly used as a rhythmic instrument, in the Venezuelan flatlands the maracas takes on the role of a solo instrument in its own right. It was from this instance that I imagined a piece where the player would have to master short patterns and combine them with great virtuosity to construct larger and complex rhythmic structures, which could then be juxtaposed, superimposed and set against similar passages on tape, thus creating a dense polyrhythmic web. This would eventually disintegrate clearing the way for a traditional accompanimental style of playing.

The sound sources on tape include harp, a folk guitar and double bass pizzicati for the tape's attacks, the transformation of bamboo rods being struck together for the rhythmic passages and rattling sounds created with the maracas themselves for other gestures.

10. Dr Jiradej Setabundhu (Thailand) - Dancing Queen

Setabhundhu, with his typically wry sense of humour, explains, "I think the title says it all. You'll see the Dancing Queen all right like in ABBA's song. She can dance, she can jive, and she's having the time of her life. Although it's not Friday night, still the lights are low. With a bit of rock music (well, there's a guitar), everything is fine. Dancing Queen is feeling the beat, alas, not from the tambourine, but from a strange algorithm, leading her from one dance to the next. She may not be as young, sweet, or even seventeen as portrayed in the song, but you will agree that she can dance…."

Well, you can dance, if you want to. Anything's possible at the Central Market Annexe - after all, in our City After Dark, stranger things have been known to happen.