slay ride

"On the Trail of..." is a collaborative composition by Phil Dadson and Johnny Chang, for violin and harmonium.

The composition was realised at the Parnell Project Space, hosted by Te Tuhi.

Recorded and mixed by Johnny Chang

Phil Dadson & Johnny Chang: "On the Trail of..." Live@Parnell Station

8 channels Electronic piece composed in the context of the Ambiant Creativity European Project : partnership between ACROE (Grenoble), Ionian University (Corfu) and ZKM (Karlsruhe).
Software used : Genesis (ACROE development), SuperCollider (IU help and support), Zirkonium (ZKM development).

Collisions - 8 channels electroacoustic piece(Stereo version)

Recording of Call Super's set at Dekmantel Festival 2022.

"Thank you for letting me do this, and much love to those who joined me. This set is dedicated to the memory of Steve Bronski."

Call Super at Dekmantel Festival 2022

Performers: Steven Schick, conductor; Wilfrido Terrazas, flute; Ellen Hindson, oboe; Grace Talaski, clarinet; Kosuke Matsuda, percussion; Kyle Adam Blair, piano; Miguel Zazueta, Natalia Merlano Gomez, Alex Taylor, voice; Amir Norouz Nasseri, Ilana Waniuk, violins; Myra Hinrichs, viola; Peter Ko, cello; Matthew Henson, bass

Production assistance from Alex Stephenson, David Espiritu and Jessica Flores 

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Stylistically, Interviews resembles a collage: materials borrowed from Josquin, spectralism, Leonard Cohen, high modernism, elevator music, the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Kyle Adam Blair, Appalachian folk singing, bits recycled from my own pieces, the recorded voice of my mother, my own songs and poems. But collage is generally creating something new out of things that come from different places, disparate things; this feels more like a multifarious reflection of my own musical and personal world – things that all come from, or at least have been absorbed into, the same place, a musical inheritance or accumulation. I’ve always felt slightly unsure of the relationship between all of the many aspects (personas?) of my music making – sometimes they feel far away from each other, held in different compartments – but here I feel I’ve found a way for many of them to coexist in one place.

Conceptually, I think of Interviews as more concerned with storytelling than with aesthetics. Or at least, Interviews represents an intersection between musical and personal concerns. In the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, I undertook ethnographic research as part of my PhD coursework. For this I interviewed both my parents, Vicki and Trish, asking them all kinds of questions about their lives: what it was like for them growing up, how they came to terms with their sexuality, what it was like living through the politically tumultuous 1980s in New Zealand, how they went about starting a family, how it was for them when I came out. 

At the time, this was a really rewarding process of discovery and documentation, a way to learn new things about my family and where I’d come from, a way to feel connected to them across the Pacific during the enforced separation of the pandemic. Now, those interview recordings have other resonances. Trish was diagnosed with early onset dementia several years before we made the interviews; by the time we recorded them, her dementia had started to really affect her short term memory. Now, nearly four years later, her dementia is quite advanced, and many of those memories are gone for her. Looking back, the documentation of those memories is precious. 

The making of this piece has been both a way for me to hold on to that preciousness, those past perfect moments of connection, but also a way to process grief, the ongoing present of loss and change. In many ways Interviews occupies a threshold, between looking back and looking forward; it is both at once, acknowledging the messiness and multifacetedness of memory, not singular, smooth, or linear. I also see it as a small way of showing gratitude for both of my devoted, supportive, sensitive, beloved parents, and of celebrating Trish’s life.

Interviews, for ensemble and prerecorded sound

06.10.2018
Live performance from Église Saint-Salvi, ALBI, France

Viola Torros Project (Albi, Augmentations III - excerpt 2)

Piano practice session extract from "Viene la sera" of Puccini's Madame Butterfly. 

Johnny Chang -  Augmentation / expansion / compilation/ piano

Butterfly Voicing Study

for String Quartet
Workshopped at the Nelson Composers Workshop, August 2020

twenty-three

nunui - Artist: Jim Langabeer and Rosie Langabeer

Composer, singer, conductor, occasional improviser studying at the University of Auckland.

twenty-three

Blake Scanlen

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