Commissioned and premiered by Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier with conductor Chloé Dufresne on 9 and 10 September 2022.

Dedicated to Sun Keting for her generosity, warmth and time.

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Introductory notes:

This is a piece about openings musical, physical, and spiritual.

This is a piece inspired by those uncomfortable moments of moving towards an unfamiliar space.

This is a piece for those who get through the cracks.

This is a piece for the ones who continue to knock.

This is an unveiling.

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Image by Chris Brignola

Unveiling - Extract 3

Unveiling - Extract 2

Unveiling - Extract 1

Musicians from Oxford University - Oxford 2016

Photo credit: Mike Ko

i) Holding my Breath
ii) When the Light Fades

Echoes as a title is an allusion to the experience of discovering and exploring a vast cave. The idea of ‘holding one’s breath’ that characterises the first movement is to imply a feeling of nervousness and excitement, as if one is crossing into unknown territory. 'When the Light Fades' is a more descriptive title that imagines walking into a cave so far that one loses the light from the familiar realm left outside.

The title of this piece, 'Echoes' can be seen as serving a double function. Firstly, it provides the context through which the conceptual image of a cave may be deduced. Secondly, it hints towards the relationship between the movements that was central to crafting the musical material and their developments. Thus, just as echoes are paradoxically isolated and distinct sounds yet whose identity relies on another pre-conceived sound, the second movement of this work relies on the preparation in the first movement in order for its own sound world to be understood.

Echoes for String Quartet (2016)

Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra - Shanghai 2016
Liang Zhang - Conductor
Sun Yaoqi - Erhu

Photo credit: Bayu Anggoro

The concept of a vanishing point has informed the crafting of this work in several ways. On a surface level, the notion of separate entities gradually converging together is crucial to the structure as well as the motivic, harmonic and textural development of the piece. Jonathan Harvey amongst others has remarked upon the spectral predilection for harmony to be subsumed by timbre, and it is this merging of musical parameters that can be understood as the underlying trajectory of the composition. Moreover, this interpretation of a vanishing point as a synthesis between differing ideas also manifests itself in the aesthetic outlook of 'Vanishing Point'. Through the coupling of the Chinese erhu and folksong with a symphonic orchestra as a starting point, a sense of reconciliation between Eastern and Western cultures is attempted.

As a creative impetus, I was interested in the paradoxical implication of closure suggested by a vanishing point. Hence, although the vanishing point of a landscape is literally seen as the end point, the viewer also knows that the landscape continues infinitely further into an unknown realm. 'Vanishing Point', whilst inherently being a piece in its own right, thus hopes to direct the curiosity of the listener toward this unknown realm, and to consider the question: what is beyond the vanishing point?

2016/2017

Vanishing Point for Erhu and Symphony Orchestra (2016)

Fantasia Orchestra - London 2017

Photo credit: Vanessa Ives

The players are asked to repeat each and every bar in the piece between five and seven times. Each decision by each player informs the tapestry of sound produced.

This piece seeks to examine the relationship between the past and present. Indeed, any consideration of the past can be said to be an interpretation intrinsically imbibed with the knowledge of the present, and conversely, these acts of retrospection can be said to shape our understanding of the present. As such, it is this idea that arguably makes history most relevant today as the past and present perpetually reinvent each other in a constant state of flux. 'Reinventions' thus presumes a notion that the past and present form a fluid relationship and attempts to create a perceptual experience that explores its nuances.

Reinventions for String Orchestra (2017)

Performed by Ensemble Paramirabo, Domaine Forget Academy

Photo credit: Felipe Correia

'It's a long way to go, Habibi' is written for piano trio and off-stage percussion, the latter of which is required to move between three different positions surrounding the audience.

One of the starting points of this piece was a reading of ‘The Boy from Aleppo who Painted the War’ by Sumia Sukkar. The novel tells the tragic story of a family living in Aleppo during the recent civil war who are eventually forced to leave their home for the safety of Damascus. Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of this book is that the majority of the narrative is told from the perspective of a fourteen year old boy, Adam, with Asperger’s Syndrome. This results in the reader rarely being told any explicit causes for the multiple horrors that the family endure with the narration largely revolving around changes to the family members themselves as perceived by Adam. Thus, an enormous dislocation between the local events of the book and the larger context of the civil war is created, forcing the reader to reconstruct the narrative with knowledge of contemporary events in Syria today.

'It’s a long way to go, Habibi' takes ‘migration’ as its central theme, and as influenced by Sukkar’s book, attempts to fragment the relationship between cause and effect. It is therefore to this latter end that the relationship between the piano trio and the off-stage percussion may be understood. In terms of migration, I was interested in interpreting the theme on several levels. Most immediately, migration manifests itself literally through the spatial use of the percussion as the percussionist is instructed to play from and between three ‘stations’. Secondly, the emotional story of migration as told by Sukkar affected the overall character of this work, and in particular the use of melodic cells and their fragmentation/(re)construction. Lastly, migration, with its emphasis on destination, was considered for its structural implications on notions of closure and teleology.

It's A Long Way To Go, Habibi for Piano Trio and Percussion (2017)

Reylon Yount - Yangqin
Shez Manzoor & Balazs Szabo - Producers

Photo credit: Claire Brear

Recorded at Abbey Road Studios in February 2018

A primary impetus behind this work was a consideration of the dislocation between cultural identity and heritage that may affect those born outside their place of origin. This can be thought of as a paradoxical sense of nostalgia – a longing for a past transcending a purely temporal notion and encompassing also a culture that simply did not exist for its subject. Of course, such an anxiety is arguably only perpetuated as long as one thinks about it, yet it may manifest itself as clearly as being unable to communicate with one’s grandparents due to a lack of a shared language.

'Rituals and Resonances' attempts to engage with this idea, and takes as its musical framework an exploration of the relationship between sound and its resonance. Just as one does not have (or need) control over their heritage and origins, a sound may include resonances far removed from its initial perception that although appear incongruous, are in fact quintessential to its being. Indeed, the yangqin itself is distinct to Western string instruments in its non-linear and inconsistent distribution of pitches, and so much of the writing of this piece is informed by the geographical layout of the instrument. The desire to compose idiomatically for an unfamiliar instrument was most challenging and to some extent undoubtedly futile, but equally it seems there is some value in acknowledging the challenge and contemplating its significance. In this way, nostalgia is similarly paradoxical, for in the words of Marta Caminero-Santangelo, “it is not lost at all, [but instead] the only culture shaping the person's perspective”.

The piece is dedicated to Reylon Yount and my grandparents.

Rituals and Resonances for Solo Yangqin (2018)

Performed by Juice Ensemble at Cheltenham Music Festival 2018

Photo credit: Chris Tweten

Introductory notes:

This piece looks to reinterpret elements of Chinese oral traditions within a musical context. There are thus sounds inspired on the one hand by Chinese musics, namely Chinese opera and ritualistic singing; and on the other, sounds inspired by the Cantonese language itself, using for instance the different ‘tones’ that make up the language as registral ‘mannerisms’ or ‘behaviours’.

My grasp of Chinese has never been very good, much to my mother’s frustration, and my ability to pronounce tones accurately is particularly lacking. I imagine that I am playing a game of ‘Chinese Whispers’, and I am at the end of the line, and my message is always wrong.

How to play ‘Chinese Whispers’ (or ‘Telephone’ in the United States):

Players should form a line. 
The first player invents a message to say, and whispers it to the second person in line. 
The second player then passes the message as they heard it to the third. 
This process repeats until the message has been passed fully along the line. 
Each player may only whisper the message once. 
When the last player to receives the message, they should announce it as they heard it from the penultimate player and compare it to the initial message.

...chinese whispers... for vocal trio (2018)

Clarinet - Scott Lygate
Viola - Paul Silverthorne
Yangqin - Reylon Yount

Performance at LSO St. Luke's for the London Symphony Orchestra's Soundhub Showcase

Photo credit: Henry & Co.

Introductory notes:

I have often wondered what it would have been like if I had grown up 6,000 miles away in Hong Kong instead of London, which was a very real possibility. What would my musical tastes be? Would I be pursuing a different career path? Would my values be different? Who could I be? Who would I be? It can be quite a disorienting experience reflecting on this alternative reality, one that alludes to a notion of ‘distance’ that is at once geographical, temporal and cultural.

At a time when technology has undoubtedly better connected this world and Hong Kong is only a Google search and a scroll away, distances are arguably becoming increasingly obsolete. Suddenly the cultures, traditions and musics of Hong Kong are readily accessible and perhaps aren’t so far after all. Yet these technological offerings shed no light on answers to my questions, and only seem to accentuate the futility of looking for them. It is as if technology is a veil that once removed, reveals unbreakable and untraversable distances.

'Spiralling scrolls' looks to explore these ideas of distance and their implications on structural narratives and the development of relationships between instruments from distinct cultures. The piece looks to raise questions about the perception of identity and consequently how these identities can be recontextualised, reshaped and reimagined. Indeed, the hope is to reflect the complex and fluid nature of diasporic culture, for although there are questions that will never be answered, there are new possibilities and realities as a result.

Spiralling Scrolls for Clarinet, Viola and Yangqin (2019)

Winner of the UK Critics' Circle Young Artist Award 2021 for his "compelling and individual" works, Alex Ho is a British-Chinese composer whose music and stage works have been described as “menacing and poetic" (The Guardian), "important and impressive" (Opera Today), and a "fresh, different idea that captured the imagination" (Scottish New Music Awards 2021). Alex is resident composer at Glyndebourne Opera (2023-26) and was formerly Artist-in-Residence at Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier (2021-24) and Associate Composer at Oxford International Song Festival (2022-23). His music theatre piece, Untold, premiered to critical acclaim at Concertgebouw Brugge and O. Festival Rotterdam in Spring 2023 and won the FEDORA Opera Prize 2023 for a "bold and moving creation".

 

Alex has had pieces performed/commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, BBC Radio 3, Royal Philharmonic Society, Royal Opera House, Het Concertgebouw, National Opera Studio, Music Theatre Wales, London Sinfonietta, Riot Ensemble, VOCES8, and National Youth Choirs of Great Britain. His works have featured in venues across the UK, Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, USA and China, on platforms including SoundState Festival (Southbank Centre, London), Sound Unbound (Barbican Centre, London), Hearing China (Shanghai Symphony Hall, Shanghai), nonclassical (London), Cheltenham Music Festival, and BBC Late Junction. Alex is co-director of Tangram, a music collective currently Associate Artists at LSO St Luke's.​ Alex graduated from Oxford and Cambridge universities and completed a doctorate at the Royal College of Music with a full AHRC scholarship (LAHP studentship supported by the RCM).

Alex is represented by Intermusica: https://www.intermusica.co.uk/artist/Alex-Ho

Unveiling - Extract 2

Alex Ho

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