KINALUGARÁN. Composed 2021-2022.

For eight flutes (doubling percussion) and quadraphonic fixed media

Haiku poetry by the composer.
Additional recordings by Jayson Palolan ("Idaw", "Dayaw") on Philippine indigenous instruments. Used with permission.

Commissioned by New Music Concerts. The creation of this project is made possible with the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

Performers:
Tristan Durie (flutes, percussion)
Sophie Lanthier (flutes, percussion)
Stephen Tam (flutes, percussion)
Sarah Moon (flutes, percussion)
Alheli Pimienta (flutes, percussion)
Leslie Alt (flutes, percussion)
Maria Pelletier (flutes, percussion)
Dianne Aitken (flutes, percussion)
Juro Kim Feliz (electronics)
Brian Current (conductor)

Premiere performance on 30 April 2022 at The Music Gallery, Toronto, Canada. Recorded by Paul Hodge. Fixed media rendered in stereo for this recording.

==

Derived from the root word “lugar” (Filipino/Spanish: “place”), “kinalugaran” [kee-nah-loo-gah- RAN] refers to the site or place where a thing is set in position, a place where someone placed an object. A common context surrounding this word implies that one should know their place in society, reflecting the emphasis on social harmony prevalent among many Asian communities. As a result of this consciousness, peoples are marginalized by way of being othered and rendered invisible, as the loudest assertive voices among “Western” first-world societies are most heard and valued.

Kinalugarán highlights this condition at the forefront. An audio essay mimics a documentary that features the voices of Filipino artists based in first-world diasporic communities: violinist Ramon Alfonso “Chino” Soberano in Tempe, Arizona, United States; film composer Marie-Luise Calvero in Freiburg, Germany; and theatre creator Riley Palanca in Montreal, Canada. An ensemble of flutes and percussion plays live music over the audio essay as the three artists narrate their recorded perspectives and lived experiences surrounding invisibility, assimilation/integration, and homelands over soundscapes of found objects and musical instruments. Flute quotations from Filipino composer Jose Maceda’s work “Suling-suling” (10 flutes, 10 bamboo buzzers, 10 gongs; 1985) mesh with recordings of Jayson Palolan (“Idaw,” “Dayaw”) on Philippine indigenous instruments. Manifesting overlapping multiplicities surrounding experiences of invisibility, Kinalugarán bears the form of a modular work where both audio essay and flute ensemble music can exist either independently from each other or simultaneously on top of each other.

Kinalugarán is the third installment of a series of musical works that reflects on idealizing while also disentangling oneself from one’s place of origin. While detachments from homelands happen in complex layers of uprooting and unraveling, memories need not undergo processes of distillation or deconstruction in order to weave new normalities or subjectivities.

Special acknowledgments to individuals who made the creation of this work possible: Ramon Alfonso Soberano, Marie-Luise Calvero, Riley Palanca, Jayson Palolan, Kat Estacio.

I. Buka (00:00)
II. Part 1: Invisibility (01:01)
III. Part 2: Language, Assimilation (05:14)
IV. Part 3: Catching Up (08:31)
V. Selah (14:09)
VI. Part 4: In-Between Worlds (15:09)

Kinalugarán (for eight flutes and quad fixed media) [2022] - premiere

38 Special

The People's Avant-Garde w/  MusiKolektibo - 13/11/2024

A Landscape of Memories through the Music of Hope Lee
by Juro Kim Feliz

This podcast is the first episode of "Nomadic Sound Worlds," a four-part series that explores Canadian contemporary music through the lens of present-day global migration. Published in 1999, a collection of essays named "Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss" (ed. André Aciman) informs and inspires this project, with trajectories branching out from related themes including mobility, displacement, loss, reconciliation of polarized truths, and invention of selves. In this regard, the series will feature selected immigrant Canadian composers whose musical worlds collide with various personal stories of immigration.

This episode explores the music of composer Hope Lee.

Producer and host: Juro Kim Feliz
Additional voices: Janet Sit
Music: Hope Lee (excerpts from "Across the veiled distances," "Von einem fremden Stern," "Voices in Time")

Additional music: Matthew Fava, Juro Kim Feliz
Editor: Ryan MacFarlane

Special thanks to the Canadian Music Centre Ontario for providing the resources, to John Gray (CMC Audio Archivist), to Furore Verlag for the published scores, and to Hope Lee for sharing her insights and personal story.

Nomadic Sound Worlds // Episode 1  A Landscape Of Memories Through The Music Of Hope Lee

Producer and host: Juro Kim Feliz

Musical excerpts:

Sandeep Bhagwati
"Shivaji Park at 6am"
"Warnings Written on the Wind"
"Smruti Ranga," from the album "Dhvani Sutras"
"Niemandslandhymnen"

Iranian-Canadian Composers of Toronto
the opera "The Journey: Notes of Hope"

Additional music: Matthew Fava, Juro Kim Feliz
Additional soundscape recordings: Teresa Barrozo
Editor: Ryan MacFarlane

You can read the corresponding blog post here: https://www.musiccentre.ca/node/155226

Nomadic Sound Worlds // Episode 2 Noise, (Dis)enchantment, And (Re)birth

"Airplane wings fly to Nebraska. Words emerge out of endless blue skies. Paws touch solid ground as miles stretch across cornfields. Melodies and piano strings finally fill in the grumpy silences."

Track credits:

Music and lyrics by Juro Kim Feliz. 
All instrumental and vocal tracks produced by Grumpy Kitty Boy. 
Mixing by Rojh Baquiran (The North Hit Project). 
Mastering by Sebastián Gómez Mancheno. 
Cover artwork courtesy of Yuna Kim.

====

AIRPLANE WINGS 
Grumpy Kitty Boy 

Blue sky thinking 
Even though nothing comes sublimating 
Curious meanderings 
All reminiscing what didn't sink in 
Your photograph, staring 

CHORUS 
Airplane wings keep flying 
While you stood, not caring 
Stereotypes start dismantling 
Red flags you keep ignoring 

Oysters and clams, craving 
Your warm embrace, crushing 
What didn't sink in 
Our chemistry, persisting 

CHORUS 
Airplane wings keep flying 
While you flinched, not wanting 
Million miles start disrupting 
Geographies that keep insisting

Airplane Wings

CW: Police brutality, gun violence, murder 

This is a reaction to the police brutality, political persecution, and systemic injustice that's been going on in the Philippines for way too long. I hope that this track can help spark much needed awareness and action to fight for our rights and the rights of the people who are violently stripped off of it. Always, ACAB.

Vocals and words by Bridge 
Mastered by Johann Mendoza 
Artwork by Jeune Aramburo 

Credits to the person who took that grievous footage.

Trepid Abundance

Trepid Abundance (feat. Bridge)

Music and lyrics by Juro Kim Feliz

Recorded at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Nebraska City, NE during an artist residency in July-August 2019

Produced by Juro Kim Feliz
Mixing by Marie-Luise Calvero at mu-waves, Freiburg, Germany
Mastering by Sebastián Gómez Mancheno at mu-waves, Freiburg, Germany

Cover art by Yuna Kim
Photography by Prince Requino

Performers:
Grumpy Kitty Boy - vocals, keyboards, programming

Special thanks to the following: Carolyn Fe ("Bad Puppy Mummy"), "Raccoon," Eric Alper, Holly McAdams Olson, Sara Ammon, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska City, NE).

=========

“But who am I? I'll never know!”

Going through the school of hard knocks, Grumpy Kitty Boy seems to suffer from amnesia. He dreamily sings about things that don't make sense: words and pictures in the night sky, zodiac signs, shattered TV screens, horizon lines, bus rides. However, his ramblings shine in a different light when he actually pretends not to see reality in front of him. It turned out not to be a case of amnesia—Grumpy Kitty Boy rather prefers avoidance from past lives that continue to control his future.

“Blue Eyes” paves the way for Grumpy Kitty Boy's debut EP “Show Me The Kibbles,” a mishmash of songs that introduces us to glimpses of his life and character. EP release on February 26, 2021!

===

BLUE EYES
Grumpy Kitty Boy

Circles marking all the words
And pictures in the night sky
Hoping that I'd remember
Thin lines tracing zodiac signs
Where headlines fail to bring light
Dreaming that I’ll recover

But who am I?
I’ll never know
Even when the lights spell it out
People might go blind
With blue eyes
That lure me to my destiny
I’ll pretend that I don’t see

Shattered, broken TV screens
With flashes of your past lives
Deleting what you could have archived
Vague signs of horizon lines
Where bus rides kill your dreams for life
Feeling that I could have logged out

But who am I?
I’ll never know
Even when the lights spell it out
People might go blind
With blue eyes
That lure me to my destiny
I’ll pretend that I don’t see

But who am I?
I fail to know
Even when the sounds fade them out
People just scroll down
With blue eyes
That lure me to my destiny
I'll pretend that I don't see
I'll pretend that I don't see

© 2019 Juro Kim Feliz (SOCAN). All rights reserved.

Show Me The Kibbles

Buy in Bandcamp!

Blue Eyes

Juro Kim Feliz, b. 1987.

“His music thrives in the sustained tension, like the kinetic energy emanating from the corners of a frame, the opposing forces holding up a house.” (Musicworks, 2022)

Toronto-based composer Juro Kim Feliz has internationally presented his work across Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe. Born and raised in the Philippines, he studied composition at the University of the Philippines and McGill University under Jonas Baes and Melissa Hui. He also sought further mentorship from composers Liza Lim, Dieter Mack, Linda Catlin Smith, Katharina Rosenberger, and Japanese koto artists Hiroko Nagai and Masayo Ishigure. Since winning the Goethe Southeast Asian Young Composer Award (2009), he collaborated and received commissions and performances from artists including Continuum Contemporary Music, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Liminar, Ensemble x.y, Marilène Provencher-Leduc, Guy Few, Wesley Shen, and Renee Fajardo.

Feliz was awarded “Highly Commended” distinctions for "Hanggang sa Paglubog ng Araw" and "Kinalugarán" at the Ars Electronica Forum Wallis (2018, 2024) and was nominated for the “Excellence Award in Music and Entertainment” at the Golden Balangay Awards (2019) in Canada. Alongside serving as the composer-in-residence of Toronto-based New Music Concerts (2022-2023), he also completed artist residencies at the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (2018), Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (2019), and the Canadian Music Centre Ontario Library Residency (2018-2019). His music appeared in concert programs for the Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Festivals (2009-2010), Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival (2009), Asian Composers League Festivals (2009-2015), Music Biennale Zagreb (2017), New Music on the Bayou (2017), MATA Festival (2018), Nief-Norf Summer Festival (2018), MUSLAB (2018), and Cluster XI: Digital Edition (2020). Music releases include "Hanggang sa Takipsilim" in “Mind & Machine, Vol. 4” (Ravello Records, 2022), "Gandingan sa Kagiliran" in “Millennial Masters Vol. 7” (Ablaze Records, 2017), and synth-pop independent releases under the moniker “Grumpy Kitty Boy.” His works are published under Babel Scores.

Alongside composition activities, Feliz served as producer and co-host of the community radio talk show "Sigaw ng Bayan" at CKUT 90.3 FM Montreal (2015-2017). Under the Canadian Music Centre Ontario, he produced the article/podcast miniseries "Nomadic Sound Worlds" (2018-2019) that explores and situates Canadian contemporary music within present-day global migration. As a writer, Feliz has written feature articles for Musicworks Magazine since 2020.

Kinalugarán (for eight flutes and quad fixed media) [2022] - premiere

Juro Kim Feliz

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