The ASEAN Youth Ensemble (AYE)

The ASEAN Youth Ensemble (AYE) project is a partnership project between the Ministry of Culture, Thailand and the Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music. Initiated in parallel to the International Symposium ‘Classical Music in ASEAN Context’ in 2014, AYE aims at promoting collaborations between young musicians in South East Asia through joint performances and also to encourage music experts and composers from each country to research ways in which to combine their respective musical traditions.

For this year’s AYE performance in the context of our International Symposium 2018, we have invited young musicians and composers from each country to create dialogues between the ASEAN traditions in collaboration with Ensemble TIMF of Korea and students from the Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music. 

The ensemble will be presenting new compositions by ASEAN young composers who were selected for the workshop with Peter
Veale, Professor Dieter Mack, and Professor Sngkn Kim.

Programme

Dances of the Lights, Sunghyun Lee
This piece is my second piece about lights and its movements. I wanted to make vivid, light sound worlds by using the tiny patterns and metalic instruments. These tiny patterns are often superimposed and juxtaposed each other to make the three-dimensional sound worlds. All these movements from the lights and shadows – especially reflections and refractions are main materials in this piece.

Nobody Knows where Truth grows, Katharina Roth
What is the right way to take? Where to go? What will be the right decision? In life as well as in a composing process always one needs to make decisions. Often there are many possible perspectives to take and ways to go. Nobody knows which will be the best one.

Retrospect, Yeo Zhe Qi Joey
Retrospect is a piece written with the current affairs of ASEAN countries and the trend of rapid Westernisation in mind. It is a musical representation of influences on the composer style in terms of both Traditional elements and sounds from the West. The piece is split into 3 sections; “The Pendopo”, “The Dalang” and “The Wayang Kulit”, which are all components of the Javanese Gamelan Shadow Puppet Show, and the piece is structured in a way that expands the initial soundscape created by the usage of textures through extended techniques into a more melodious section that follows the elements of Gamelan composition like cross rhythms and doubling. Finally, the piece ends with a surge of energy that combines the tonality of western music and the structure of traditional music.

Nostalgic Portrait , Chow Jun Ya
Nostalgic Portrait 忆.述 is a piece that presents an atmosphere where the storyteller recalls his nostalgic moments when he is telling a story.

Hininga, Jose Antonio Buencamino
Hininga ‘Hininga’ is a Filipino word for breath often used to connote matters of the spirit: 

This piece is a musical depiction of breath in its spiritual context with the Kulintang, a set of eight bossed gongs from the Philippines, in the center of its conceptual and harmonic framework. Rhythmic modes from Kulintang repertoire were used extensively throughout the piece, with melodic sensibilities reminiscent of Kalinga music. The strings build energy that melds into the percussion and develops interlocking melodies, eventually blurring the lines between inhalation and exhalation as it drives forward. It was derived from a piece the composer had written in 2017 for music and dance.

Lost in the Jungle, Pongtorn Techaboonakho
“Lost in the Jungle” is about a journey into unknown jungle, where the mysterious sound of the jungle is heard throughout. It’s not known if it’s possible to make it out of the jungle; yet the mysterious sound is always calling.

Jiji, Hue-Trinh Luong
“JiJi” is the piece that I dedicate to my Professor Dr. Georg Hajdu at Hamburg University of Music and Drama. The text was written by me and was narrated by Georg. I use softwares Macaque and Maxscore, which were developed by him to analyse and display five main partials of the spectrum of his voice.

“Macaque is a tool for spectral processing and transcription. It is a component of the MaxScore notation software package for Max allowing the transcription of analysis data in the Sound Description Interchange File Format (SDIF) into standard music notation”.

Beside of using these five partials of the spectrum as the main material to compose this piece, I also made an electronic part from the recording of his voice. The video uses raw material from artist Nguyen The Son.