FESTIVAL
Sounding Now
Sounding Now is a festival of contemporary music that brings together divergent contemporary practices with the goal of connecting people from different artistic communities in order to explore the ways their shared interests intersect.
Presented by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, the festival brings together contemporary music of different approaches – concert music, installation, electronics, and improvisation.
Visit the Sounding Now blog here.
Festival 2020
Update: Cancellation of Festival 2020
In view of current health and travel advisories relating to the ongoing COVID-19, YST is implementing safety precautions consistent with NUS policy. Coupled with the increasing number of international travel bans, the organizers have decided to cancel this year’s festival. However, a select number of events are still slated to happen independently. Please see refer to the events listing below for more information.
We apologise for the inconvenience and seek your kind understanding as we work to ensure a safe environment for all.
The 2020 Sounding Now Festival takes place from 17-19 April 2020 at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.
Special guests are percussionist Steven Schick, and Swiss-based piano quartet Mondrian Ensemble. Singapore-based contemporary music ensembles OpusNovus and Wu Xian will perform, alongside top experimental music improvisers from Singapore. Additionally, percussion students from YST; and Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam; will perform alongside Mario Choo, and Max Riefer.
View the festival performances below, and read the full programme notes which will be hosted at the Sounding Now blog.
Events
Launching the Sounding Now Festival 2020, this concert features contemporary percussion music with musical influences as well as musicians from throughout the world. The resulting combinations brings traditions where they rarely ever go. Sundanese gamelan meets microphone feedback. Traditional Zimbabwean mbira music transforms into improvisation with electronics. More than a dozen scraped gongs paint the air in slowly changing sound colors. Performers include the eminent Steven Schick, Bani Haykal, Max Riefer, Christoven Tan, staff from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory and percussion students from conservatories throughout the world.
*Limited Seats
This concert features two of the most important works in the modern percussion repertoire. Iannis Xenakis’s Persephassa for 6 percussionists places the musicians around the audience, making the spatial movement of sound an integral part of the composition. Brian Ferneyhough’s Bone Alphabet was written at the request of Steven Schick who will perform it on this concert. It is an extremely demanding work only for virtuosos. Additionally, the concert will premiere Irama Mabuk by YST Head of Composition Assoc Prof Peter Edwards.
*Cancelled
Sounding Now has always included a classic modern work from the repertoire for cello and piano. This year is no different. YST contemporary music coaches Martin Jaggi and Jongah Yoon, members of the ensemble Wu Xian, team up again to perform Morton Feldman’s mesmerising 80-minute work, Patterns in a Chromatic Field.
*Cancelled
Hailing from Basel, Switzerland, the piano quartet Mondrian Ensemble brings with them a selection of works by modern Swiss composers of differing generations, from the eminent oboist and composer Heinz Holliger to YST Composition Artist Faculty member Martin Jaggi. Also part of the younger generation in the concert – and the only composer not from Switzerland – is Austrian Thomas Wally whose Caprice for string trio will be performed.
*Limited Seats
The Sounding Now Festival’s annual jam in the lobby featuring the best experimental music improvisers from Singapore. Join us for this immersive 60-minute free improvisation in the conservatory’s large, resonant foyer.
*Limited Seats
Steven Schick performs the Asian premiere of Soundlines for percussion and ensemble by American composer and improviser George E. Lewis, the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. In addition to works by Carola Bauckholt, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Yuji Takahashi, OpusNovus performs along with members of the Mondrian Ensemble in Jürg Frey’s Extended Circular Music.
*Limited Seats
Students from YST as well as Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam present a concert of modern chamber works for percussion, including Assoc Prof Ho Chee Kong’s work Folksongs for 3 marimbas. The concert will also feature the classic Ionisation by Edgard Varese, the first work for percussion ensemble, performed by the students and conducted by Steven Schick.
*Cancelled
The closing concert of Sounding Now 2020 celebrates the creativity springing today out of our region with works by younger composers and seasoned, established veterans of the contemporary music scenes in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. The concert is performed by Wu Xian with guest clarinetist Danelle San Andres Dionisio, a member of the Ripieno Ensemble in Manila, and guest percussionist, Kyle Acuncius, Principal Timpanist with the Sun Symphony Orchestra.
YST CONSERVATORY
National University of Singapore
3 Conservatory Drive
Singapore 117376
