Megaphone, Violoncello, Two Snares and Live Electronics.
2016

From October 2nd of 1968 up to now there have been several massacres in México. Each of these precise days a particular pop song was a number one hit in the US. 
Whether this entanglement of events can converge in a realm were a hit could signify a semiotically abject abyss, it is in the territory of historical time where its truly abjection is deployed with a contemptuous innocence.

Written for Pamplemousse Ensemble
2016
New England

Score: https://www.scribd.com/document/335896732/abyeccion-Memory-topographies
Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0oHUmAUu64&t=185s

Abjeccion|memory_topographies

Abjeccion | memory topographies

Elusive (thriller)

Angling Alone in Snow is inspired by both Ma Yuan(c.1160-65 -1225) ’s painting Angler on a Wintry Lake and Liu Zongyuan (773-819)’s poem River Snow.  A characteristic feature of many paintings from Ma is the so-called "one-corner" composition, in which the actual subjects of the painting are pushed to a corner or a side, leaving the other part of the painting more or less empty. In Liu’s poem, the poet used only twenty words to paint a quiet and cold picture: on the river with heavy snow, a small boat, an old fisherman, fishing alone in the cold river. Literally, it is a landscape poem. Between the lines, he borrowed the poem from the fishermen who lived in the mountains and rivers to imply his own arrogant emotions, and expressed political depression and loneliness. 

The beginning of Angling Alone is Snow combines water and wood door sounds these real nature sounds and Guzheng with electronics these instrumental and electronic sounds to create a thin and sparse texture, depicting a fishing reel in Ma’s artwork. In the meanwhile, the opening also reflects the loneliness emotion. The vitality and reality combination composition has been run through the entire work. Besides the loneliness, the music also expresses the poet’s other emotions: depression, righteous indignation, nostalgia and peacefulness. 

Guzheng is a Chinese pluck string instrument with a more than 2,500-year history. The instrument used in this work in the modern Guzheng, which has 21 strings. The guzheng is ancestral to several other Asian zithers such as the Japanese koto, the Korean gayageum, Mongolian yatga, and the Vietnamese đàn tranh. 

Duration: 10 minutes

Angling Along In Snow (2018)for Guzheng and Computer

Qi Shen

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