Fragility and Sonorousness: For Solo Piano

Fragility and Sonorousness was developed in a conversational way with Melbourne-based pianist Kane Chang to capture the fragility of experience with the richness of sonorous piano textures. It is both pure sound-lingering moment and explosive virtuosic piano textures-and philosophical, drawing on contemporary Chinese architects Rossana Hu and Lyndon Neri's ideas of memory and surprise. The musical content came from our discussion; to resonate with Kane's love of Bach spirituality, Chopin longingness and ancient Chinese guzheng virtuosity, the music veers from lingering tones to massive sonority conglomerations through juxtapositions of inspirations from ancient Japanese Gagaku spectral chords, Korean "GugakkyemyÅnjo" modal lyricism, the New York free-jazz of Matthew Shipp, and Chinese traditional guzheng-like virtuosity but with hints of European baroque and romantic lyricism of Bach and Chopin. The structure of the triptych is organic in its flow: its inner central room of slowness explores Gagaku-like spectral colours disrupted by New York-influenced free-jazz, psychologist Kylie Lapierre's conceptual ideas on stasis, and cheeky hints of Afro-Cuban salsasonclave, whilst the outer flanks' nothingness to movement have elements of surprising hints of son claveappear at the close, and the opening's lingering kyemyÅnjo-inspired melodic fragments push into the distilled inner room.