Aphonic Dialogue, Double Concerto for Cello, Voice and Chamber Orchestra

ASKO|SCHÖNBERG

conductor Reinbert de Leeuw
cello Doris Hochscheid
voice Salomé Kammer

Cello Biënnale Amsterdam 2014

Thursday, 23 October 2014
20:15 hours
Donderdagavondserie
Amsterdam
Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ

Inleiding 19.30 uur in Grote Zaal door Saskia Törnqvist

Aphonic Dialogue, Double Concerto for Cello, Voice and Chamber Orchestra

Unsung Equilibrium

Orkest de Volharding
Dirigent: Jussi Jaatinen

de Volkskrant, Kunst & Cultuur, 9 september 2005 (pagina 15): 

Dan is Unsung Equilibrium van de zo te horen helemaal in Nederland ingeburgerde Koreaanse Seung-Ah Oh stukken geraffineerder, met een scherp gesneden montage van voortdurend van kleur verschietende blazersblokken. Oh - een naam om te onthouden.

Then Unsung Equilibrium of what we hear all the way in the Netherlands established Korean Seung-Ah Oh sophisticated pieces with a sharp cut montage of color constantly shooting-blazers blocks. Oh - a name to remember.

© Frits van der Waa 2006

Unsung Equilibrium

Canonic Phase
Percussion Quartet


The Boston Musical Intelligencer
in: Reviews
July 18, 2014
Contemporary Music Festival Commences
by Brian Schuth 

The two outer sections of Seung-Ah Oh’s Canonic Phase were the most engaging and enjoyable moments of the evening. Oh was raised in Korea, studied in Boston at Brandeis, and now has a career split between Chicago and The Hague. In Canonic Phase four percussion players have two sets of four instruments—one set made of wood, one of metal (“metal” includes skinned drums). During the course of the piece the players gradually move from wood to metal and back again, playing canonical figures transformed through processes that the composer says are based on prime numbers. If this sounds forbidding, the result is absolutely engaging. Any process piece for four percussionists carries the ghost of Steve Reich’s Drumming; its limited vocabulary, very strict process and extended time scale, is a severe precursor to Canonic Phase, where the varied rhythms and the fast changing surfaces were propulsive without ever settling into a single meter or forcing itself into a groove. Canonic Phase embraces complexity, but that complexity is embedded in a generative process that creates constant moments of recognition and surprise. As musical material flew about the ensemble, the mind chased after it, until some new arrival caught its attention. It was intellectual and infectious at the same time. The middle section dwelled on the change in timbre, the rapid-fire attacks replaced by rolling figures; this was paradoxically harder to follow, as the texture became denser and the slower figures were less memorable. The performance by Kirk Etheridge, Joseph Kelly, Michael Jarret and Brian Maloney, was electric at its best, and never less that full-throated and confident.

FCM Tanglewood Music Center Fellow and Guests

Canonic Phase

Circle (2004)
Percussion: John Corkhill
recorded 15 Feb 2013

Circle for solo percussion

DaDeRimGil

Fragments (2009)
Ensemble Klang(2011)

Premiered by Flexible music (2009)

Fragments

Eduardo Olloqui, Oboe
Ulrich Pöhl, Conductor 
Ensemble Insomnio

Original Version

Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2016

Seung-Won Oh - JungGa

Persistent Memory for solo cello (2013)

Mixtures II for four amplified violins (2018)
When imagining four violins in a closed space in my head, my immediate imagination
drew a painting of similar colors freely and joyfully co-existing. And my inner ear
heard the mysteriously rich and scrumptious dissimilar sounds. There, my musical
intuition was to emphasize the minute differences by placing the same to similar
sounds together. I imagine that the reward of such experience is to gradually learn to
hear the progressively magnifying differing sounds- from what was initially the same
sounds.
Truly in homogeneity, the uniqueness (otherness or singularity) of each instrument
comes through due to the individual player’s un-imitatible and exclusive relationship
to their own instruments. Who can imagine several violinists producing exactly the
same sounding music from a same score? The oxymoron of the simplicity (playing
same to similar music) and complexity (the collective listening experience of these
differing sounds) logically exists in my imagination.
In Mixtures II for Four Amplfied Violins, I attempt to create a space where the
boundary between togetherness and individualness, and similarities and dissimilarity
ebb-and flows.

Mixtures II (2018)

Please listen to Resonances with a subwoofer to experience it in its full effect. Please note that the audio is a recording of a live performance: therefore the effect of the live sintones - especially the important low frequencies- are not fully reflected in this recording.
One of the high points of Resonances is the final section starting around 14' culminating towards gigantic resonant gong sections with thick sinetone chord towards 16'.

Resonances for Four Percussionists and Sinetones (2016/2019)
 
As I mature as a composer, I have become increasingly starved for well-sounding, fully-resonant music which surrounds me and allows me to get completely lost in a sea of sound.
This is exactly what I wanted to happen in Resonances for Four Percussionists and
Sinetones: I imagined a resonating space where an array of pitched and non-pitched
percussion instruments, as well as the somewhat unrelated sinetones ebb and flow. In my
theoretical imagination, I could simply construct a resonating environment by controlling (or
designing) the various degrees of consonance between the co-existing pitched percussion and
the sinetones.
The pitched percussion instruments, therefore, are a medium to put this imaginary idea to the
test. 
 
In overall compositional design, the harmony between the percussion and the sinetones start
off consonantly and then go on their separate ways. At a certain point the sinetones fall off and
completely clear the path for the sound of the acoustic instruments.
After a rigorous, somewhat machine-like cacophony of wood sounds the two meet again and move forward to a long-awaited moment of resonant space at the end. 
 
OSW

Seung-Won Oh

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