A multi-media music performance with the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble (Hong Kong) and Ensemble Resonanz (Hamburg), travels along the questions of containing, of shipping and shifting cultural identities - with composers/artists Samson Young (HK) and Simon James Phillips (Aus/Ger), concert designer Folkert Uhde (Ger) and dramatic advisor Elisa Erkelenz (Ger). The project is the result of an extensive research period in both Germany and Hong Kong.
In response to the theme CONTAIN, Sensations of getting lost, Phillips uses collaborative compositions to activate processes of communal agency and autonomy. Together with the musicians of both Ensemble Resonanz and the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, he guided shared creative processes to develop five modules - non-notated musical and sound material with flexible but clear parameters - that can be played in various ways during performance. Each module is triggered by an algorithm in a manner that is unpredictable to the musicians, who must then play and adapt to fit with the environment around them. Choices such as dynamics, tempi, articulation, and timbre need to be communicated and executed in real time whilst being sensitive to other inputs occurring in the space - such as video projections, performances of other repertoire, playback of interviews, field recordings and the recorded modules from the absent ensemble (due to Covid, it was not possible to have a live performance with both ensembles).
t h e a t r e
Simon has composed, recorded and performed music for a number of theatre and dance works in Europe, including productions for Theater Basel (Basel), the Deutsches Theater (Berlin), the Residenztheater (Munich), Schauspiel (Frankfurt), the Schaubühne (Berlin), Schauspielhaus Bochum (Bochum), Teatro Maria Matos (Lisbon). Most recently he composed for the Schauspielhaus Bochum's production of Lorenzaccio.
n o s t o s
Nostos (2015) is an 80 minute immersive composition for piano and multi-channel electronics created for the dance performance by Tok'Art of the same name, choreographed by André Mesquita. The production opened the Guidance Festival in Guimares, Portugal, before it toured nationally. The composition was partly supported by The Australia Council for the Arts.
"But, in the left area of the stage, there is the key piece of this creation: the piano, the discreet shadow of Simon James Phillips."
Público
t h e i d e a o f s o u t h
The Idea of South is a performance of live improvised solo piano by Simon James Phillips alongside the Frank Hurley silent film SOUTH (1916), which is a chronicle of Ernest Shackleton’s attempt to cross the Antarctic.
“Although I do not intend to accompany the film as such, I chose to work with SOUTH because I believe that my aesthetic can provide the sense of time, isolation and the struggle (both in internal and external) that the film only hints at.”
