Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Fire-Huǒ-Afi is about fire (huǒ in Mandarin and afi in Samoan) and its presence as energy (qiyun) across sound, city-landscape, and spirit. It takes its points of departure from Vincent Tay's film Fire. Its flickering red and reciprocal graduated black charcoals resonate with the subtle two-tone colourings in Korean artist Cheolyu Kim's "Journey to Nowhere" which seems to encompass heaven and earth energy interplays in its sonic rings. In response, my music works as a series of organic energies within the A section (lightening arpeggios/Peking Opera gongs suddenness with guzheng bending notes and chords, barré-held harmonics and tremolo melody) and its variations (raucous kkwaenggwari and skin drums in climaxes), interspersed with repose through B breath sections (harmonics and Tingsha cymbals). The arc of the piece begins frenetically and stilly with extreme slowness, moving through variation techniques to several raucous climaxes growing in intensity at speed, before falling back to a burst of energy with stillness at its slowest pace, to linger gently upwards. These accelerating ratios amidst improvisatory deliberate 'roughness' are beautifully caught in Australian poet Kate Fagan's responsive poem, "Amplifier Birch Coil: after Cheolyu Kim," to the rough score of my music and a meditative sitting with Kim's artwork.

Work Details

Year: 2025

Instrumentation: Guzheng, percussion.

Duration: 11 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Complex rhythmic detail and changing colour nuances

Written for: Joshua Hill, Chuqiao Zhao

Commission note: Commissioned with funds provided by Western Sydney University.. Commissioned by Vincent Tay (director & cinematographer)