Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

This work was created as a non-electronic intermedial work with artist Thorsten Schirmer. Schirmer is an expert in traditional Chinese painting, in a form which uses the tip of the small finger instead of a brush. Each of the five musical movements is associated with a painting or paintings; the three main movements have an accompanying triptych, and the shorter interludes are represented by a single painting. The shakuhachi part is not a quotation of any traditional pieces, but makes use of concepts particularly of musical time derived from the classical shakuhachi honkyoku repertoire. In so doing, it also draws the piano into this temporal world, characterised by its reliance on a sense of ma (Japanese: 'interval', here referring to temporal interval, and often misinterpreted simply as 'silence'). This allies closely with the use of space in Schirmer's paintings.

Work Details

Year: 2025

Instrumentation: Shakuhachi, piano.

Duration: 29 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — The piano part is moderately difficult, but the shakuhachi part requires high-level, professional performing skills.