NEWS___

The Emigrants by Dr. George Tsz-Kwan Lam, Associate Professor of the Department of Music at HKBU, has been released as a digital EP available on all streaming platforms.

A documentary chamber music work, The Emigrants weaves instrumental music for cello and percussion together with recordings of oral history interviews with emigrant musicians living and working in New York City. Discussions of immigration in the United States typically concentrate on how foreign nationals stay in the country: how long they can stay, if their stay is legal, and what the ramifications of their stay are, etc. The Emigrants, however, shifts the focus to their experience as emigrants in seeking to understand what these individuals left behind. By creating a chamber music work informed by a documentary process, Lam wanted to engage in a
dialogue between the audience, the musicians (both live and recorded), and the stories.

The Canadian music website PanM360 recently featured an interview with Lam about his creative process in working with text and music in The Emigrants.

The cello-percussion duo New Morse Code commissioned The Emigrants and premiered the work in December 2018. A new studio recording is now available on all major streaming platforms including Spotify and Bandcamp.

Networking the Russian Diaspora is a fascinating and timely study of interwar Shanghai. Aside from the vacated Orthodox Church in the former French Concession where most Russian émigrés resided, Shanghai today displays few signs of the bustling settlement of those years. Russian musicians established the first opera company in China, as well as choirs, bands, and ensembles to play for their own and other communities. Russian musicians were the core of Shanghai’s lauded Municipal Orchestra and taught at China’s first conservatory. Two Russian émigré composers in particular―Alexander Tcherepnin and Aaron Avshalomov―experimented with incorporating Chinese elements into their compositions as harbingers of intercultural music that has become a well-recognized trend in composition since the late twentieth century. The Russian musical scene in Shanghai was the embodiment of musical cosmopolitanism, anticipating the hybrid nature of twentieth-first century music arising from cultural contacts through migration, globalization, and technological advancement.

As a pioneering study of the Russian community, Networking the Russian Diaspora especially examines its musical activities and influence in Shanghai. While the focus of the book is on music, it also gives insight into the social dynamics between Russians and other Europeans on the one hand, and with the Chinese on the other. The volume, coauthored by Chinese music specialists, makes a significant contribution to studies of diaspora, cultural identity, and migration by casting light on a little-studied area of Sino-Russian cultural relations and Russian influence in modern China. The discoveries stretch the boundaries of music studies by addressing the relational aspects of Western music: how it has articulated national and cultural identities but also served to connect people of different origins and cultural backgrounds.

ISBN 9780824879662 Published September 30, 2020 by University of Hawaii Press 320 pages Hon-Lun Helan Yang (HKBU) (Author), Simo Mikkonen (Author), John Winzenburg (HKBU) (Author), Frederick Lau (CUHK) (Series Editor)

The music on MEMORY, the Navona Records debut by acclaimed violinist Patrick Yim, is linked together by the themes of memory, culture, and identity. The albums title track was composed by the Chinese-born composer Chen Yi who searched for a harmonious marriage of centuries-old Western and Chinese musical traditions as she remembered her beloved violin teacher, Lin Yaoji. In the liner notes for this bittersweet and poignant piece, the composer addresses her mentor directly, saying I expressed my deep sorrow in the music, to remember your fatherly mentorship. Away, Alone, Aloft, written by Kai-Young Chan, is a touching and penetrating work which draws upon an ancient Chinese tale about the loneliness and regret of the legendary Moon Lady. The melodic materials and overall character of the piece are based on a poem by Tang Dynasty poet Li Shangyin, who expressed with his words the Moon Ladys deep emotions. Miles upon Miles is composer Yao Chen’s personal meditation on three of the myriad facets of the Silk Road, which unleashed the free flow across borders of sound. The compositions first movement, Silk Road, makes strong use of tremolos and trills to evoke a specific atmosphere, a rhythmic momentum that heightens the degree of expression before ultimately fading into a more peaceful environment. Buddhist Mantra is marked by the use of open strings, built on a cascade of restless three-note patterns that are always striving forward until a moment when the mantra takes effect and sustained harmonics rise to the fore. Pizzicato is the dominant trait of Kung Fu, the closing movement, which is sprightly but sophisticated, exciting and endearing. Miles upon Miles, composed for amplified violin and electronics by Austin Yip, is in three movements entitled I. Gilt Bronze, II. Cameleer, and III. Sancai, referring to the features of artifacts in the Hong Kong Museum of Historys special exhibit, Miles upon Miles: World Heritage along the Silk Road. Gilt Bronze refers to the materials used for a silkworm of the Han dynasty; Cameleer refers to a painting of a Tang dynasty cameleer, and Sancai refers to the colors that were used during the Tang Dynasty. In the work, field recordings of the Xinjiang Uyghur Muqam, taken in Xinjiang 2015, are operated through granular synthesis and serve as an extra dimension to the work. Miles Upon Miles was commissioned by violinist Patrick Yim in 2018. The albums final selection, Relics, composed by Michael-Thomas Foumai, was commissioned by Yim as a suite of companion pieces to be performed at the Hong Kong Museum of Historys special exhibit. The work is a suite of eight movements inspired by artifacts featured at the exhibition.

The HKBU Apps Resource Centre helps students develop a combination of design and programming skills by providing guidance and mentoring from professional computer programmers and designers.

Developed by Dr. Elias, this guided listening app was inspired by the experience of Dr. Elias as an instructor at the University of Washington for the American Popular Music course in 2016. The materials are modeled after the textbook:

Starr, Larry, and Christopher Alan Waterman. American Popular Music : From Minstrelsy to MP3. Fifth ed. 2018.

We are thrilled to have a new harpsichord arrived at the Department – Italian after Grimaldi: Carey Beebe 1995. It is the third harpsichord in our early keyboard collection.

The Italian Harpsichord after Grimaldi, built by Carey Beebe of Australia, has 2 movable registers and a compass of 4.5 octaves (GG-d’’’, transposable between A415 and A440). Typical of the best instruments of late-seventeenth century, it has boxwood naturals, walnut accidentals and traditional wooden jacks with boar bristle springs and is fitted with natural celcon plectra. Strung in Malcolm Rose yellow brass wire, the harpsichord has a characteristic bold and vibrant tone and touch to suit the most discerning musician and is ready for a wide range of baroque repertory.

HKBU Department of Music Research Assistant Professor Dr Eugene Birman has been named a recipient of one of the world’s most prestigious academic prizes, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, for 2018. Dr Birman is among the youngest in the Fellowship’s history and is the only recipient from Hong Kong in recent years.

Created in 1925, the Guggenheim Fellowships (https://www.gf.org/), offered by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in USA, are awarded to those who have made impressive accomplishments in their respective fields and exhibit exceptional promise for the future. The Foundation receives nearly 3,000 applications each year. Many Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners are Guggenheim Fellowship recipients.

A distinguished composer, Dr Birman’s work has been performed on four continents and by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists, counting among them such names as the London Philharmonic, the violin virtuoso Maxim Vengerov, and the BBC Singers. His highly public career in music, with appearances on CNN, BBC World TV, Radio France, and others, is characterised by a fearless focus on socially relevant large-scale compositions covering the financial crisis, the environment, and more.

“I’m honoured not only by the faith placed in me by the Guggenheim Foundation to create what I consider a breakthrough piece in my career, but also by HKBU, my home institution, for giving me the ideal environment to think, to teach, and to create,” Dr Birman said. “Particularly with a controversial project like this, I feel empowered in many ways to continue down this path of creating music that challenges, compels discussion, and seeks real answers through this universal language.” Being awarded the 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship will allow him to focus on a new commission for a leading British vocal ensemble on the topic of fake news and Russian foreign policy, in partnership with librettist Scott Diel.

A Fulbright scholar and DPhil recipient from the University of Oxford in the UK, Dr Birman also holds degrees from Columbia University, the Juilliard School in USA, and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Italy.

Jeannie’s paper examined her research into the topic of “Pictures into Music and the Reveal of the Unsaid: Rachmaninov’s The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29.” The benefits of presenting papers .

Florence Cheng presented findings from her research on the music of 20th C. French composer Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908-2002) and his 1950 choral work, Le Cantique des Cantiques (The Song of Songs) in her paper on “The ‘Natural Aesthetics of the Human Voice: A study in Daniel-Lesur’s , Le Cantique des Cantiques .”

http://mus.hkbu.edu.hk/News/20...

"Research Postgraduates Jeannie Liu Lai-ying (PhD, Musicology) and Florence Cheng Shi-suen (PhD, Musicology) presented papers at the Ninth International Conference of the World and Music Studies Association, held at the Senate House of the University of London in early August this year.

“The many questions I answered for 20 minutes after my paper showed me that other scholars were very interested in my research”, said Jeannie. “Both the positive and critical comments really stimulated my thinking.” Jeannie’s paper examined her research into the topic of “Pictures into Music and the Reveal of the Unsaid: Rachmaninov’s The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29.” The benefits of presenting papers as well as representing the Department of Music and the University are something which Jeannie feels are important as well. “In Hong Kong, no one other than my supervisor [Associate Professor David Francis Urrows] is doing research in my topic area of intermedial studies in music, so attending and having the opportunity to meet and clarify ideas with important scholars such as Werner Wolf, was very useful. Interaction is needed, not just questions and answers by email.”

The International Word and Music Studies Association (WMA) was founded in 1997 at the Karl-Franzens University in Graz, Austria, to “promote transdisciplinary scholarly inquiry devoted to the relations among literature, verbal texts, language, and music “. Major world-renowned scholars, including Lawrence Kramer, Werner Wolf, and Walter Bernhart, are members of the Executive Committee. The book series, Word and Music Studies, is the organization’s principal publication medium, but working papers by postgraduates are also published online at the Association’s website. The Word and Music Studies Forum was organized for postgraduate students in 2010, and organizes its own bi-annual conferences.

Florence Cheng presented findings from her research on the music of 20th C. French composer Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908-2002) and his 1950 choral work, Le Cantique des Cantiques (The Song of Songs) in her paper on “The ‘Natural Aesthetics of the Human Voice: A study in Daniel-Lesur’s , Le Cantique des Cantiques .” Other notable presentations included a lecture on silence in English lute songs and madrigals by Anthony Rooley, founder of the influential Early Music ensemble, The Consorte of Musick, and professor at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland; and Lawrence Kramer’s keynote paper on “Rosetta Tones: The Score as Hieroglyph.”

In addition to Jeannie and Florence’s papers, Hong Kong Baptist University was also on the program with the world premiere of a commissioned work by Dr. David Francis Urrows at the opening recital. His Paroles pour musique (peut-etre) for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and piano, was given its first performance by Suzanne Lodato, Michael Halliwell, and Walter Bernhart in the Chancellor’s Hall to a full house. Baptist University was unique in being represented in London by three separate presentations at this conference. The next WMA conference is scheduled for Summer 2015 at Fordham University in New York."

Postgraduate student WEI Cong (PhD, Composition) received Honorable Mention in iSING! 2020 Composition Competition. The iSING! International Young Artists Festival is a vocal festival with international repute which aims at training young singers from the West to sing in Chinese on both Chinese and Western operatic and concert stage.

This year, the iSing Music Festival organized its first composition competition and it commissioned young composers to set selected Chinese Tang poetry to music. This competition attracted more than 100 submissions from 18 countries around the world. A total of 16 award-winning works were chosen including 10 Grand Prize Winners and 6 Honorable Mention. WEI’s work Farewell to Dong Da is written for soprano, tenor, and orchestra.

WEI is a first-year Ph.D student at Hong Kong Baptist University under the supervision of Professor Christopher J. Keyes. “Ihave benefited greatly from the great teachers and peers, and I especially appreciate the advice my supervisor Prof. Christopher Keyesgave me. I am deeply humbled and cherish this award-winning experience.”, said WEI.

For details of the iSING! 2020 Composition Competition: https://www.isingfestival.org/copy-of-2020-ising-festival

For details of the iSING! International Young Artists Festival: https://www.isingfestival.org/

A collection of choral music featuring traditional compositions, recent works, and debut recordings by prominent composers from Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. Recorded by HKBU student choir Cantoría Hong Kong under the direction of Professor John Winzenburg.

Available on 10 April.

The HKBU Apps Resource Centre helps students develop a combination of design and programming skills by providing guidance and mentoring from professional computer programmers and designers.

Professor Keyes, Project Leader of the Centre has newly developed the 20th Century Music Study Guide for music students to learn more techniques of musical compositions, examine the historical and social contexts of various movements, and listen to excerpts of musical pieces and identify important elements to enhance understanding.

The HKBU Apps Resource Centre helps students develop a combination of design and programming skills by providing guidance and mentoring from professional computer programmers and designers.

Professor Keyes, Project Leader of the Centre has newly developed the A.L.M.S app for musicians,who deal with some form of music technology every day. It is intended to make the professional life with music technology easier, more professional, and less stressful. It intends to make musicians literate in audio.

The Department of Music is proud to announce that we have invited the world-renowned violinist Professor Joel Smirnoff, a violin faculty of The Juilliard School in the US, to be the guest in this Institute of Creativity Distinguished Visitor Program 2018. Professor Smirnoff is an award-winner including Grammy Award. He was President of Cleveland Institute of Music in 2008 to 2016. The Department will be organising four activities including a concert, two masterclasses and a public lecture on HKBU campus between 30 October and 2 November.

In the public lecture, Professor Smirnoff will speak on the topic of his journey as a musician, including his education and transition to professional life. A discussion on his own multifaceted career in music and his creative process related to composing is also expected.

On 1 November, together with violinist Dr Patrick Yim, violist Dr Felix Ungar, cellist Samuel Ericsson and pianist Rachel Cheung, there will be a concert at Academic Community Hall where the musicians will be playing two new works by composer Dr Chan Kai Young and Professor Smirnoff himself, a concerto for two violins by J.S. Bach and piano quintet by Robert Schumann.

In addition to the public lecture and the concert, Professor Smirnoff will also conduct a violin masterclass and a chamber music masterclass on 30 October and 2 November respectively. He will instruct our students on violin playing techniques as well as those for chamber music.

The Cantoría Hong Kong and HKBU Choir are the featured ensembles on the newly published CD and website for the choral anthology “Half Moon Rising: Choral Music from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.” The 24-piece collection was compiled and edited by HKBU Associate Prof. John Winzenburg and published by Edition Peters in February 2015.

The two choirs from the HKBU Department of Music provided most of the project recordings for worldwide distribution. The Cantoría performed 17 of the 24 tracks, while the BU Choir provided 3 others. Over half of the tracks were recorded during live performances beginning from 2010 to November 2014. The two choirs completed the remaining tracks in studio recordings in December 2014 and January 2015. “Our Hong Kong vantage point and the Department’s growing strength in performance and research placed our choral ensembles in a unique position to present such a wide variety of Chinese choral works in a timely manner,” says Winzenburg.

Half Moon Rising is the first collection of its kind to be published internationally. While Chinese choral music has developed a rich repertoire over the past century, very few pieces have been available to non-Chinese choirs. The purpose of this anthology is to offer choirs everywhere an accessible introduction to performing Chinese choral music. It includes a representative and contrasting selection of works from the past century in a broad range of styles and dialects. The HKBU ensembles recorded works in Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, and Jiangsu dialects.

The Half Moon Rising CD and website recordings are intended to facilitate the performance of Chinese-language choral works by conductors and singers everywhere, regardless of background. The book itself includes musical scores transliterated from the original Chinese, along with introductory notes and poetic and literal translations. It also contains a historical introduction and Mandarin Pronunciation Guide. The website adds online support materials, including aural and written pronunciation guides for each piece, along with the recorded excerpts from the CD.

Based in London and Leipzig, Edition Peters is one of the major international music publishers. Over the past two centuries, it has become recognized for its publication of Western vocal and instrumental masterworks. Half Moon Rising represents one of its first efforts in expanding to contemporary music of Asia. “Edition Peters is very pleased with our participation,” says Winzenburg. “Our students achieved a high artistic level and are providing great support to choirs everywhere.”

The aim of Vanissa’s research sojourn is to invent novel musical instruments to make music-making accessible to non-music specialist. She believes that we are all blessed with the gift of expressing our emotions through music, and technology helps to get around the process of learning and practicing, which used to be the only way of musical expression on traditional instruments.

(http://mus.hkbu.edu.hk/News/20140526/Fulbright-Scholarship.html)

To expand its existing research strengths, the University has recently established six new interdisciplinary research laboratories, which will enable HKBU to embrace the data-driven world by applying advanced technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence to address frontier research issues.

Professor Guo Yike, Vice-President (Research and Development), expressed that with an inspiring cross-faculty research structure, the six laboratories will enable the University to radically break disciplinary boundaries and foster close engagement between sciences, arts and social sciences, helping HKBU researchers make new discoveries.

The six interdisciplinary research laboratories and their key research themes are as follows:

Augmented Creativity Laboratory

Augmenting human creativity, artificial intelligence and human-machine collaboration, and public policies and strategies for the creative industries.

Computational Medicine Laboratory

Therapeutics and new drug discovery, driven by traditional Chinese medicine research.

Data Economy Laboratory

New theories, business practices and technologies in today’s rapidly evolving web-based economic and financial context, in particular the development of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies as well as data capitalisation.

Ethical and Theoretical AI Laboratory

Basic theories of artificial intelligence, with a particular emphasis on machine and cognitive behaviour studies, as well as central issues in philosophy, ethics, AI verifiability, and AI interpretability.

Smart Society Laboratory

Society’s future organisational structure, operation and development mode, in particular the intelligent social administration led by applications of big data technologies, and its unprecedented challenges and opportunities.

System Health Laboratory

The behavioural and wellbeing mechanisms that underpin complex systems including life, the environment, human society and web-based media.

Composer and pianist: Professor Christopher J. Keyes, Professor of the Department of Music at HKBU

Violinist: Dr Patrick Yim, Assistant Professor of the Department of Music at HKBU

Flautists: Tete Bae, Matthias Ziegler

Clarinettists: Leung Chi-shing, Barnabas Volgyesi

Orchestra: Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava

Professor Christopher J. Keyes’s new album, Ravello Records’ A CONNOTATION OF INFINITY, consists of a CD, a DVD and a Blu-ray disc. The record speaks directly to why listeners should embrace the transgressive element of electronics in traditional classical music, and it envelopes and enters the minds of listeners from all walks of life.

Professor Keyes, who wrote as much software for the album as he did music, employs his own interactive graphics software for a more immersive experience. It also features performances of selected pieces on video.

The album opens with a 17-minute-plus epic performed by the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava. It was originally written for Professor Johnny Poon, Head of the Department of Music, and the HKBU Symphony Orchestra.

The HKBU Apps Resource Centre helps students develop a combination of design and programming skills by providing guidance and mentoring from professional computer programmers and designers.

Developed by Dr. Elias, the Music of Asia app is asupplemental app with guided listening examples, testing materials, and a glossary that will help students better understand the styles, instruments, and diversity of the music of Asia. Divided into weeks which cover twelve different geographic and cultural areas, each week's listening seeks to promote discussion about music and cultural ideas. As a listening and study aid, this app will be of use to teachers and students as an survey style introduction to the music of Asia.

The HKBU Apps Resource Centre helps students develop a combination of design and programming skills by providing guidance and mentoring from professional computer programmers and designers.

Professor Keyes, Project Leader of the Centre has newly developedMusic Technology Glossary App which is a very useful reference for audio engineering and music students. It revises common technical terms associated with music technology for improving music technology literacy.

Dr Matthew Schreibeis, Assistant Professor of the Department of Music at HKBU, has been awarded the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the first composer based in Hong Kong to receive this honour.

The Charles Ives Fellowship is awarded annually to two composers of “exceptional gifts”. Dr Schreibeis said, “I am deeply honoured to have been selected to receive the 2018 Charles Ives Fellowship. It is humbling to receive an award with direct connection to America’s first great composer Charles Ives—one of twentieth-century music’s most far-sighted thinkers—and to receive this recognition from some of the American composers whose work I most admire.”

Candidates for this music award are nominated by the 250 members of the Academy. A committee of six eminent composers then select the winners. Dr Schreibeis and the 17 other recipients of this year’s awards in music will be honoured at the Academy’s annual Ceremonial in New York City in May.

Dr Schreibeis’ compositions have been performed throughout the US, Europe, and Asia by soprano Tony Arnold, New York New Music Ensemble, Oberlin Contemporary Ensemble and Eastman BroadBand, among others. His music spans orchestral, chamber, and vocal works, and includes collaborations with video artists and a series of pieces for traditional Korean instruments. This summer he will be in residence at Copland House and record his first CD for Albany Records.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honour society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. The Academy seeks to foster and sustain an interest in Literature, Music, and the Fine Arts by administering over 70 awards and prizes.

A paper by research postgraduate Vanissa Law, titled “Audio collage as an instrument for musical expression: combining freehand and tangible controllers,” was presented at the 41st International Computer Music Conference (ICMC).

The paper details ongoing work of a 4-channel performance tool, based on the idea of audio collage, which is controlled by freehand gestures and button pressing a tangible interface. The system makes use of coordinates of one hand in 3D space, gesture recognition of whether the hand is a palm or a fist, and button switches pressed on a wearable tangible controller on the other hand. The 3D data from the hand is mapped to the position of the listening point, panning, volume, and playback speed of samples, depending on which mode is triggered. A number of design issues regarding the use of touch-free and tangible interfaces is discussed, which includes the importance of touch in music and sound making, and challenges of mapping gestural data to human proprioception in 3D space.

Prof. Helan Yang and Dr. David Francis Urrows were invited to give position papers in the roundtable discussion, Teaching Western Music History.

Built around the theme of “Musics in the Shifting Global Order” Prof. Yang explained that “the roundtable in which I took part was very well received, suggesting the importance of music history pedagogy in this global era. The IMS roundtable which addressed the theme of the conference was thought-provoking, in a way validating my own research direction, which is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary. Aside from the papers, I enjoyed the exchanges with various Hong Kong colleagues from sister institutions as well as with newly-met colleagues from Taiwan and elsewhere.” Prof. Yang talked at length in the roundtable about challenges in adopting new pedagogical directions in the teaching of music History.

Dr. Urrows’ position paper, ‘Confessions of a Skeptic’, suggested that the shifts referred to throughout the conference may be moving in a direction quite different from the ones assumed by the conference title, and that the notion of the ‘decentralization’ of Western art music in musicological study is at odds with everything from classroom realities to its seemingly inexorably growing hegemony over global music business.

(http://mus.hkbu.edu.hk/News/20131113/IMSEA-Taipei.html)