Harmony and Faded Ink

​​共声而和 · 消隐之墨
共鳴と消えゆく墨

조화 담묵

Tickets £15/£8 concession here

In Harmony and Faded Ink  Shui Mo 水墨 brings five new commissioned works by East Asian composers to Bristol.  Highlighting the programme is the renowned JIA Guoping’s Misty Frost and Faded Ink 寒烟淡墨, a work drawing on the timbral delicacies and ‘irregularities’ of Shui Mo’s traditional instruments.   Jia’s unique background includes playing banhu in local Shanxi opera troupes, and founding ConTempo Beijing, one of the first ensembles in China to use traditional instruments within cutting-edge contemporary music.  

Breath sounds of the shakuhachi (Kiku Day) and taegeum (Dasom Baek 백다솜), along with the sheng (mouth organ) are central to Eunseog Lee’s SPIRIT 霊・息 breath invoking the beginning of time and the Holy Spirit as a divine breath, a serene vocal chant forming a point of lucidity within.    Wang Tianyi 王天仪’s Variations of the Wandering Sound takes a richly heterophonic folk tune as its basis, then ‘wanders’ to referencing dances of Tibet, (medieval) chant and the honkyoku 本曲 (Edo-period) tradition of Kiku’s shakuhachi.   Jazz-influenced composer  Zhang Bohan 张博涵 takes this even further, inspired by the eastern cinematic warrior tradition (Kurosawa’s Ghost of Tsushima) in Edge Among Leaves, a work based upon layers and layers of the Japanese In mode.   

Harmony 和 in Chinese philosophy (‘not pursuing simple uniformity, rather seeking to fuse diverse elements into an organic whole while respecting their differences’) is invoked by Chengdu composer Xu Zhengtong in Symbiosis, the concert's opening work.  Interludes of traditional and improvised solos reference the sources of Shui Mo’s scintillating instrumental soundscape, accompanied by visual stills drawn from the vast water-ink (shui mo) tradition.