for cello, transducers, and sampler.
ensemble mosaik (Mathis Mayr and Ernst Surberg) live at Acker Stadt Palast, Berlin.

Gravity and Center (cello + sampler)

the crowd is a forest, program notes: 

“…out on the street, the crowd
is a forest on a giant billboard
as silence roars
I see the needle edge along
growth rings in a tree trunk
and slide toward the core”

—Bei Dao, Whet the Knife

Members of the ensemble are connected to each other in various ways: sometimes certain gestures in the music trigger reactions; sometimes performers imitate or recall materials by memory; sometimes subgroups compete with each other, trying to occupy the foreground of the music...I attempt to incorporate such interactions to create an “eco-environment” which has a constantly shifting climate—the environment moves from equilibrium to imbalance, ultimately collapsing into singularity.

Premiered by OSSIA, Eastman School of Music

Leo Matsuoka, violin
Zachery Litchfield, cello
Ariel Walton, bass
Russel Ward, baritone saxophone
Nick Morandi, bass clarinet
Sam Masters, trumpet
Yuyang Xie, piano
Elise Liu and Andrew Lauler, percussion
Reilly Spitzfaden and Darren Huang, amplification
Daniel Brottman, Conductor

the crowd is a forest(2020)--for 9 players and conductor

I write ritual music which engages with ancient artistic expressions—especially with ancient traditions and material cultures as relics, fractured by history. I create highly gestural music which juxtaposes human behaviors from cultures spanning the millennia.

the crowd is a forest(2020)--for 9 players and conductor

Yan Yue

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