guqinguquin

Noise Strings

New commissions from contemporary composers

every performance is a world premiere

Fog Lake  迷霧湖畔

Yangqin

Guqin tune 'Flowing Waters' 流水 Liu Shui, played on silk strings on 7 string ancient Chinese zither.

Guqin tune 'Flowing Waters' 流水 Liu Shui

Ed Sheeran <3

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Ed Sheeran - I See Fire (Kygo Remix)

Chinese Zither And Bamboo Flute

Guqin Of Sky - Wu Nuo

A calm and relaxing instrumental music piece. Perfect e.g. for your studying, relaxing or spa playlist. For you if you enjoy a calm and smooth relaxdaily tune. 
Power to you, Michael (relaxdaily)

Artist: relaxdaily
Title: N°084

►►► This track is also part of my "Deep Focus" playlists here on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/relaxdaily/sets/deep-focus-music-studying-concentration-work

► Watch my simple nature video and all other relaxdaily music videos on my website: https://relaxdaily.net/video-n084/

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music and video © 2014 relaxdaily

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Season 3

N°084

linktr.ee/relaxdaily

relaxdaily N°084 - Relaxing Instrumental Music – studying, relaxing, spa

#1 Hype Machine - #2 Soundcloud Ambient section - All on Christmas day :) THANK YOU!

When I heard Jasmines beautiful cover of Sweet Child Of Mine, I just had to remix it.. and this is the outcome - Hopefully you love it as much as I loved making it <3

Merry Christmas everybody :)

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Reuben Keeney x Jasmine Thompson - Sweet Child O Mine

Improvisation 12 am. 

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Keith Kenniff - Breaking

Recorded by Little Giant Chamber Orchestra.  Chih-Sheng Chen, conductor.  Rice Universtiy, March 15, 2015.

"a SEPTITUDE" for erhu, dizi, sheng, pipa, ruan, yangqin and zheng (by Michael Sidney Timpson)

Commissioned by the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, in celebration of their 60th anniversary

Yangqin Solo: Reylon Yount
Cellos: Audrey Chen, Sophie Applbaum, John Lee, Ryan Song, Brian Zhao

I. Prelude (0:00)
II. Aria (4:26)
III. Rondo (7:51)

The yangqin, or Chinese dulcimer, has a fascinating history. The Chinese name translates as "foreign instrument;" indeed the yangqin is traced back to Persia (modern day Iran), from where it spread both Westward, to Hungary, and Eastward, via the Indian Ocean and over the Silk Road, to China. The yangqin's rich past inspires me to explore the sights, sounds, and smells of travel, layered within the dulcimer's timbre. I am particularly interested in the confluence of pitch choice and tone color; different combinations of the former create substantially different sound worlds within the same instrument.

Intent on focusing on the yangqin, I support it with a cello ensemble, and then present the materials in a traditional three-movement concerto form. While a combination of Chinese and Western musical traditions inspire the musical raw material, the piece is less "about" either than a space where multitudes and contradictions can coexist.

Concerto (2016): for yangqin and cello ensemble

This is a recording of the 2000 year old chinese guzheng.  The guzheng is a 21 string zither or harp and is a traditional chinese instrument. The goal of this recording is to make the listener feel the emotion of mystical tranquility and peaceful harmony.  Please download this song and be at peace. 

Lullaby for Cedar

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)

One Undivided was commissioned for the LSO String Quartet and the Silk String Quartet by CAN (Chinese Arts Now) Festival 2019.

Premiered on 27 th January 2019 at LSO St. Luke’s London by the LSO String Quartet and the Silk String Quartet.

Conductor: Darren Bloom

We live in a world that is created by mind-made opposites. The world of words, language, thoughts and concepts, is a dualistic world of apparent opposites. Non-duality points to the essential wholeness of life. A wholeness which exists here and now, prior to any apparent separation. Despite the compelling appearance of separation and diversity, there is only one universal essence. Having been interested in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy for a few years, I recently started to recognise how non-duality embodies almost every matter of our living world. In our daily life, this wholeness includes both the non-dual aspect as well as duality. This profound philosophy inspired me to compose this piece for two String Quartets, one from the West and another from the East. Oneness is all there is – and we are all included and undivided. I hope to create a piece of music that tells something which words cannot describe. Everything is simply as it is.

One Undivided (excerpts) for erhu, pipa, yangqin, zheng and string quartet

長門怨 Judy Yeh(guqin)

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)

This piece was commissioned by TANGRAM and premiered by TANGRAM at RYE Festival 2019, Rye, UK.

2nd performance: by SILKROAD project at Boston Conservatory on Friday, 27 Sep. 

Erasure is a piece for flute, piano and yangqin, inspired by ‘Erased de Kooning’ by Robert Rauschenberg, a painting that seems to me reveals the relationship between art and spirituality. This piece plays with concepts of ‘creation’ and ‘deletion’, considered within the same process, as a way of reflecting the practice of meditation whereupon one gains thoughts as much as they learn to let them go. Erased de Kooning serves as a good example of how the removal of one subject can allow for the appearance of another ‘wonder’.

Read the blogpost here 
https://www.tangramsound.com/erasure---sun-keting.html?fbclid=IwAR1yo7ox4jpQOY_XXGHME9vbrlarguIkQNA6ZOHcT5m3-XwXUQrmgtGjVrs

Erasure for flute, yangqin and piano

This set "Relaxing Nature Sounds" is a quick sampling of some of our basic nature sounds available at Nature Sounds FM. To listen to and download more relaxing sounds and nature sounds visit NatureSounds.FM.

Thunderstormapproaching15

Sam Wu's music "abounds in delicate colours, wisps of sound and sylvan textures" (Gramophone). Many of his works center around extra-musical themes: architecture and urban planning, climate science, and the search for exoplanets that harbor life.

Selected for the American Composers Orchestra's EarShot readings and the Tasmanian Symphony's Australian Composers' School, winner of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and First Prize at the Washington International Competition, Sam Wu also received Harvard's Robert Levin Prize and Juilliard's Palmer Dixon Prize. 

Sam’s collaborations span five continents, notably with the orchestras of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Minnesota, Sarasota, Melbourne, Tasmania, Macao, and Shanghai, the New York City Ballet, National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Sydney International Piano Competition, the Lontano, Parker, Argus, ETHEL, and icarus Quartets, conductors Osmo Vänskä, Marin Alsop, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Dina Gilbert, and Benjamin Northey, violinist Johan Dalene, and shēng virtuoso Wu Wei.

Sam has been featured on the National Geographic Channel, Business Insider, Harvard Crimson, Sydney Morning Herald, Asahi Shimbun, People's Daily, CCTV, among others.

From Melbourne, Australia, Sam Wu holds degrees from Harvard University, The Juilliard School, and Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. He is currently on faculty at Whitman College, as their Visiting Assistant Professor in Theory and Composition. Sam's teachers include Tan Dun, Anthony Brandt, Pierre Jalbert, Chaya Czernowin, and Richard Beaudoin.