East-West musical pioneers Shui Mo Ensemble make a welcome return to Arnolfini to present a new transcultural music exchange project with composers and ensembles from Beijing, Xi’an, Taipei and Seoul.

Including a commission from one of China’s top composers, JIA Guoping, 贾国平 of the Central Conservatory of Music (CCoM) in Beijing. 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. Composers WANG Tianyi and ZHANGZONG Bohan combine jazz alongside traditional instruments in two more new works from Beijing. Shui Mo first collaborated with XU Zhengtong in the mountains of Sichuan near Chengdu, where she organised visits to and makes field recordings of rarely-heard Shamanistic polyphonic singers from the Qiang ethnic group. Now based in Hong Kong, Zhengtong brings award-winning experience writing new music for traditional instruments into her work for Shui Mo. Eunseog Lee, from the University of Bristol adds a new work influenced by his passion for another astonishing vocal tradition, this time from Korea: Pan’suri.

Shui Mo Ensemble are dedicated to commissioning and performing new pieces of contemporary music mixing traditional East Asian and Western instruments. Made up of a group of dynamic young players on the UK scene, Shui Mo looks to create a new repertoire unbounded by eastern or western aesthetics, and to provide new palettes for transculturally-minded composers and musical innovators of the 21st century.

https://www.shuimo.org.uk/

Entry requirements: no age restrictions — Read more — Read less