Yan Yue (b. 1997): Monolith III
for prepared erhu

AIR Contemporary Music Collective, ensemble

Zitong Wang, erhu

World premiere recording
2021 New Works Concert
Jan. 9, 2021; 77 Theatre, Beijing

AIR Contemporary Music Collective
Founders: Yan Yue, Zitong Wang
Artistic directors: Yan Yue, Haotian Yu, Erqing Wang
Principal conductor: Jinyu Shen

Stage director: Zhuangzhuang An
Technical director: Charlene Feng
Videography: Bingcheng Zhu, Xiaochi, Shiheng Zhang
Editing: Zezhong Yang
Recording: Desen Jiao
Sponsor: 北京当代欣乐团有限公司
Venue provided by: 北京东方道朴文化资产运营管理有限公司
Graphic design: Chong Wang

Monolith III (2021) -- for prepared erhu solo

DeepBlue
for ensemble and electronics
Klangforum Wien
Impuls Festival 2021

Yiqing ZHU - DeepBlue

Artur Korotin, violin I
Leona Liu, violin II
Anna Denfeld, viola
Asia Wilson, cello

conducted by Peiwen Zou

(Eastman School of Music; Rochester, NY)

String Quartet (2024)

"MOTH"—For Flute, Bass Clarinet, and Percussion

pour clarinette solo

Minori Hayashi, clarinette

Obombré (2024 / 2025)

pour ensemble et dispositif électronique

Ensemble NEXT
Flavien Boy, direction

Whammy (2024-25)

Performed by Talea Ensemble at Paine Hall, Harvard University of August 24th 2014

thicket I (Excerpt, Live at Paine Hall, 2014)

Ac!i!d—For Bass Clarinet, Cello, Drumset, and Prepared Piano

territories III (2017)

For ensemble, radio and modular synthesizer

Talea Ensemble
Stefan Maier live-electronics

Commissioned by Vancouver New Music 

12.03.2017

https://newmusic.org/

territories III (Live at Vancouver New Music, 2016-17)

for string quartet and electronics

Paris, Centre Pompidou June 7th 2017
Quatuor Diotima

**********************

As a kid we had a television set with an antenna that rotated (you could rotate it from inside of your house). When the major channels would go off-air you could rotate it and pick up strange other channels from smaller cities around - from across the border, Buffalo and so on - and you would see strange things, that were kind of hard to see (there was a lot of static) and it was very intriguing to watch that kind of things. That was really the core, the crystal at the centre of this movie: my experience with that thinking “what if the images that you pulled up were really quite extreme, disturbing, possibly illegal, and what would you think then, would you keep seeking out those channels or would you call the police or what would you do, how would you respond to them?”

David Cronenberg on his movie Videodrome (commentary track of the Criterion Collection BlueRay)

The Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion was a television signal hijacking (probably the most famous and certainly the longest signal hijacking ever) that occurred in Chicago, Illinois, United States on the evening of November 22, 1987. The signal pirates, whose identities were never found, succeeded in getting their broadcast intruded onto WTTW (a local Public Broadcasting Service television station).
The pirate broadcast, which lasted 90 endless seconds, featured an individual disguised as Max Headroom (a sci-fi computer-generated television character quite popular in the 80s, coming from dystopian near-future dominated by television and large corporations).
Around 11:15 p.m. an episode of the British TV-Series Doctor Who was suddenly interrupted by television static, after which an unidentified man wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses appeared. The man started to moan, scream and laugh, uttering various random phrases (the audio was distorted and crackling), including New Coke's advertising slogan "Catch the Wave" while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesperson at the time). He then tossed the can out of sight, presented his middle finger wearing a rubber extension, sang an excerpt of “I’m losing you” (a 1966 Motown hit recorded by the Temptations), hummed the theme song of Clutch Cargo (a clumsily-animated television series of the 60s), moaned painfully complaining about his piles, farted, put on and off a giant glove (similar to the one worn by Michael Jackson at the time). He then partially exposed his buttocks, howling: "They're coming to get me!”, while an unidentified female accomplice wearing a French maid outfit started to spank him with a flyswatter. The transmission then blacked out for a few seconds before resuming the Doctor Who episode in progress.

“The 1987 Max Headroom Broadcast Incident” features a string quartet “enhanced” with transducers and preparations. 
The digital processing of the instruments is largely inspired by the same modulation techniques that were - and still are - commonly used for radio and television transmission. 
The piece, an hommage to obsolete or soon-to-be deprecated technologies and to the media-dominated, dark future that the “cyberpunk” sci-fi of 80s foretold, is dedicated to the memory of Fausto Romitelli.

Mauro Lanza - "The 1987 Max Headroom broadcast incident" (2017)

Of other spaces
for five spatialized musicians
Commissioned by Ensemble Fractales

Ensemble Fractales

String Quartet (2024)

汪梓钧

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