空山旋舞 Ⅱ (2019)
For 7 musicians (bamboo flute, pipa, piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass)

Cover picture © 沈勤 (SHEN Qin)

Whirling Dance Among the Mountains Ⅱ [2019] | excerpt

Appassionato Ensemble
Silvia Concas, viola

PALE FLOWER IVB (2021) by Zhuosheng Jin - per viola sola

Rebecca Saunders: Fury II (2009)
Schallfeld Ensemble
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Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka - Solo Double Bass
Szilárd Benes - Clarinet
Mirko Jevtović - Accordion
Maria Flavia Cerrato – Piano
Manuel Alcaraz Clemente - Percussion
Myriam García Fidalgo - Cello
Leonhard Garms - Conductor


Audio recording: Stefan Warum

Recorded on 2.11.2021 in Schaumbad, Freies Atelierhaus Graz.

Video: https://youtu.be/gnt-6wdVrVA

Rebecca Saunders - Fury II

Recoding by Kimihiro Yasaka (八坂 公洋).

Score purchase: https://www.babelscores.com/catalogs/instrumental/5439-three-images-inspired-from-shuntaro-tanikawa

Three Images Inspired by Shuntarō Tanikawa is composed at the end of 2019. The piece derived from images in Monad, a book with Tanikawa’s poetry and GOMA’s painting. In this piece, the three sonic images do not directly relate to specific words or visual images in Monad but are more the composer’s sensual reflection towards the colours Tanikawa and GOMA made together. Shuntarō Tanikawa has been one of the composer’s favourite poets. The composer wants to dedicate this piece as a homage to the literature master.

cover photo © GOMA

Three Images Inspired From Shuntarō Tanikawa 谷川俊太郎詩三首 (2019) for piano solo

Live recording by AsianArt Ensemble with Il-Ryun Chung (conductor).

Instrumentation: daeguem, sheng, koto, gayeguem, percussions, violin, viola, cello, contrabass.

The piece's title is a linguistic corruption of the Diamond Sutra. This English title is literally translated from the Sutra’s Chinese name. However, the piece has no actual indication or relation to the Sutra. Traditional Chinese music formations influence the form of the piece.

Looks Like Jackfruit 般若波羅蜜 (2022) for nine musicians

Live recording by the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, August 8th, 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand
Angus Lee, Flute
Sabrina Ma, Percussion
Linda Yim, Piano

Composed for Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, this work was  influenced by my work trip to Mongolia. I took musical elements I heard during the trip that sound "Mongolian," then re-worked and mixed them regardless of genres, into my own musical language.

Fantasized Landscape (2019)for flute, piano and percussion

Recording by Sophie Schafleitner, Apr. 10, 2022 in Larrisa.

Score purchase: https://www.babelscores.com/catalogs/instrumental/5443-pale-flower-iv

The "Pale Flower" series pays tribute to Luciano Berio's "Sequenza", with each piece written for a specific solo instrument. The entire series carries a particular humanistic meaning: flowers are meant to be vibrant. "Pale" flowers are abnormal, representing those who cannot voice their suffering or are oppressed due to cultural or social reasons. In "Pale Flower IV," I use clothespins and paperclips to distort the original sound of the violin. One of the piece's elements is sustained notes, often performed with slow glissandi, and the other is fast-running notes, which are, in fact, a fragmented form of the former. The composition attempts to create an oppressive atmosphere, culminating in the lowest register of the violin and then returning to the delicate, moaning sound state from the beginning. This piece has two versions: a solo for violin (IV) and a solo for viola (IVb).

Thanks to outHEAR 2022.

Pale Flower IV 蒼白之花 IV (2020) for violin solo

For Disklavier and live electronics in SuperCollider.

Tempest of Glass (2023)

Recording by Pablo Rubino (violin) and Diana Gasparini (viola), June, 2023 in Buenos Aires.

Score purchase: https://www.babelscores.com/catalogs/instrumental/5442-not-here-not-there-somewherei-ii

This piece is a study of human relationships. Genders and types are irrelevant. In a relationship, each individual is both dependent and independent. The conflict and struggles between us bring us closer while generating confusion. Who am I, who are you, what am I to you and what are you to me? By trying to find the self compared to others, we are also losing the self to the others.

Parallel to the physical space, we also live in an immense psychological space inside of our minds. Since we often face difficulties locating ourselves in this invisible world, we feel uncomfortable. We don’t like to lose the control of our positions, so we try to offer, to lie, to love, to harm, to kiss, and to kill. What do we get in the end?

Maybe human beings are a kind of creature that can only be either absolutely lonely or extremely complicated.

Cover image © Alice Farion

not here... not there... somewhere... II 花犯 II (2020) for violin and viola

Séverine Ballon, solo cello
Recorded in Hertz Concert Hall, Berkeley on January 20th, 2015


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The Spider as an Artist
Has never been employed —
Though his surpassing Merit
Is freely certified

By every Broom and Bridget
Throughout a Christian Land —
Neglected Son of Genius
I take thee by the Hand —


Emily Dickinson, 1275

The Spider as an Artist (2014) for solo cello

Commissioned by ilSUONO Contemporary Music Week for ensemble Il Suono Giallo. 

Performed by Ensemble Suono Giallo, Italy:  Andrea Biagini, flute; Michele Bianchini, saxophone; Laura Mancini, percussion; Simone Nocchi, piano

Program Notes

“…risuona piu lontano che mai” is a work shaped and, at the same time, fractured by the brevity of its mnemonic fragments, which reappear in manifold and often distressing reocurrences and insistent retrospections through a series of regenerations and rearrangements of the material. Echoing the strangeness of an indescribable sound, these mnemonic fragments are advancing and regressing non-linearly, in stumbles and stutters, uncertainties and hesitations. They are treated as, what Deleuze (and Guattari would call, blocks of becomings in contemplative and non-hierarchical dialogues with one another. As something happening in the process,  in intimate intimacy.

"A becoming is always in the middle; one can only get it by the middle. A becoming is neither one, or two, nor the relation of the two; it is the in-between, the borderline or line of flight… If becoming is a block (a line-block), it is because it constitutes a zone of proximity and indiscernability, a no-man’s land, a non-localizable relation sweeping up the two distant or contiguous points, carrying one into the proximity of the other - and the border-proximity is indifferent to both contiguity and to distance." Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Continuum, London and New York, 2003), p. 293.

“…risuona piu lontano che mai” (2018) for flue/bass flute, soprano saxophone,  percussion, and piano

Composer | 作曲家

www.zhuoshengjin.com

not here... not there... somewhere... II 花犯 II (2020) for violin and viola

Zhuosheng Jin 金卓晟