“Timeless echoes” for solo Cello, live performer on painting with video projection and live electronic was commissioned by
Centre Henri Pousseur, Liège (CRFMW) for cellist Arne Deforce and painter Sirgid Tanghe.

“Timeless echoes” is inspired by ancient GuQin’s music (Guqin is a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family) and has traditionally been favored by WenRen. (A person with ultimate knowledge of the arts.) In this composition, I’d like to demonstrate a coordinated control of articulation and of inflections in pitch, timbre, and intensity. It
is an exploration of the articulatory and vibratory characteristics of cello and Quqin. This composition sees the fruition of my explorations of the sonic possibilities of acoustic instrument with modern technology in the electronic part and video part.
I was very moved by painter Sigrid Tanghe’s heart taking painting and her live performance on stage, her live action-painting in this work will give a reflection of my passion in the relationship between Guqin’s music, Chinese calligraphy and ink painting.
With Arne Deforce, the Centre Pousseur and Sigrid Tanghe in this project, I’m sure that we’ll encourage a kind of multicultural musical performing art, at the same time
enhancing the intrinsic understanding of what is multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary exchange between musicians and audiences.

I dedicated this work to Arne Deforce, Sirgid Tanghe and CRFMW.

KeeYong Chong

Live Recording Permiére at Festival Images Sonores
Centre Henri Pousseur

Chong Kee Yong : Timeless Echo's for cello and electronics - Arne Deforce Live

“João Alegria is an essential figure in the Portuguese underground music scene. With a prolific career spanning over a decade, the guitarist – as he prefers to be called – embodies artistic commitment, resilience, and a deep devotion to crafting dark, experimental soundscapes. The numerous albums the Lisbon-based musician has released testify to a sonic vision akin to its object of study: unhurried and unperturbable, yet continuous and tempestuous."

— João Morado (Beats for Peeps, Cosmofonia, Jazz.pt)

“You paint for fame & status, I paint for freedom & awareness”, reads one of the vertical graffiti that Mr.Paradox Paradise painted on some Berlin building. Likewise, there is nothing in João Alegria’s art that is done with the intention of fame or likes. He spent more than a decade editing with recognition limited to the “community” of sound nomads. “I’ve been doing this for some time and I don’t have a very wide audience”, he admits. However, who knows, knows. And who knows, like it. João Alegria’s music is for connoisseurs. Perhaps that will always be the case.
.
However, the unique contours of his art, combined with a stubborn aesthetic consistency and prolificacy, are the characteristics that simultaneously nest and vitalize it. The unconditional and obstinate way in which this “guitarist” – as he likes to be called – has created his work is a rare case of perseverance. His motivation? It’s not entirely explicit, but somewhere between the love of music and the physiological need to create lives the truth of João Alegria. If he lives because he breathes, he seems to make music because he has to live. One senses in his speech an inevitability of cathartic genesis that surreptitiously emerges between the lines like a figure wandering through the night.
João Alegria can also move through the shadows, but his music definitely points to the heavens, full of verticality” 

– João Morado (Beats for Peeps, Cosmofonia, Jazz.pt)

I really don't have a great taste in music.

Chong Kee Yong : Timeless Echo's for cello and electronics - Arne Deforce Live

ARNE DEFORCE