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Space Between Heaven and Earth

Various Artists

Space Between Heaven and Earth

Format: CD
Label: Bridge
UPC: 0090404953323
Catnr: BRIDG 9533
Release date: 08 January 2021
2 CD
 
Label
Bridge
UPC
0090404953323
Catalogue number
BRIDG 9533
Release date
08 January 2021
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN
DE

About the album

Volume 4 of Bridge's CHINARY UNG series (a 2-CD set), presents five major works composed between 1987 and 2018 by the Grawemeyer Award-winning Cambodian/American composer. Annotator Adam Greene writes: "Ung was inspired by his mentor, Chou Wen-chung, to pursue music that explored cross-cultural practices. Ung's own term for the "style" of music that evolved was 'futuristic folk music', which generally speaking, he approaches through two processes: quotation and evocation. Ung's music is deeply suffused with Asian features, including modal writing, the use of drones, microtonal inflections, elaborate percussion sections, and an expansive, even languid approach to musical-time."
Band 4 der Reihe CHINARY UNG von Bridge (ein 2-CD-Set) präsentiert fünf Hauptwerke, die zwischen 1987 und 2018 von dem mit dem Grawemeyer-Preis ausgezeichneten kambodschanisch-amerikanischen Komponisten geschaffen wurden. Kommentator Adam Greene schreibt: "Ung wurde von seinem Mentor Chou Wen-chung inspiriert, eine Musik zu verfolgen, die kulturübergreifende Praktiken erforscht. Ungs eigener Begriff für den "Stil" der Musik, der sich entwickelte, war 'futuristische Volksmusik', der er sich im Allgemeinen durch zwei Prozesse nähert: Zitat und Evokation. Ungs Musik ist zutiefst von asiatischen Merkmalen durchdrungen, darunter modale Schreibweise, die Verwendung von Bordunen, mikrotonale Beugungen, ausgefeilte Perkussionsabschnitte und eine expansive, sogar träge Herangehensweise an die musikalische Zeit."

Artist(s)

Susan Ung (viola)

James Baker (conductor)

James Baker is Principal Percussionist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra. He is Music Director and Conductor of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and Director of the Percussion Ensemble at the Mannes College of Music. Mr. Baker was the Conductor of the New York New Music Ensemble and is Principal Conductor of the Talea Ensemble. He is an Affiliate Conductor of the Slee Sinfonietta at the Institute for 21st Century Music in Buffalo. He has led the Orchestra of the League of Composers, Speculum Musicae, Ensemble ACJW, including at Carnegie Hall, the Cygnus Ensemble, the ensemble Tactus at the Manhattan School of Music, Ensemble 21 and the DaCapo Chamber players among many others. He has conducted at the...
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James Baker is Principal Percussionist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra. He is Music Director and Conductor of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and Director of the Percussion Ensemble at the Mannes College of Music. Mr. Baker was the Conductor of the New York New Music Ensemble and is Principal Conductor of the Talea Ensemble. He is an Affiliate Conductor of the Slee Sinfonietta at the Institute for 21st Century Music in Buffalo. He has led the Orchestra of the League of Composers, Speculum Musicae, Ensemble ACJW, including at Carnegie Hall, the Cygnus Ensemble, the ensemble Tactus at the Manhattan School of Music, Ensemble 21 and the DaCapo Chamber players among many others. He has conducted at the Darmstadt, Wien Modern, Transit Belgium, Contempuls Prague, June in Buffalo, Beijing Modern, MATA, Ecstatic Music and Monadnok music festivals. He has both played and conducted at the Bang on a Can Marathon and has conducted at the Monday Night Concerts in Los Angeles. He has conducted a number of Composers Portrait concerts at Miller Theater including those of Pierre Boulez (where he led the US premier of Dérive II), Toru Takemitsu, Jason Eckardt, John Zorn and Chou Wen-chung. As instrumentalist or conductor he has premiered music by many of the great composers of the 20th and 21st centuries including: Boulez, Cage, Carter, Messiaen, Dillon, Harvey, Wourinen, Davidovsky, Glass, Aperghis, Reich, Reynolds, Henze, Crumb, Babbitt, Neuwirth, Furrer, Billone, Ferneyhough and many, many others, often working closely with the composers.

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James Wilson (cello)

Aleck Karis (piano)

Aleck Karis has performed recitals, chamber music, and concertos across the Americas, Europe and in China. As the pianist of the new music ensemble Speculum Musicae he has participated in over a hundred premieres and performed at major American and European festivals. His appearances with orchestra have ranged from concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin to those of Stravinsky, Messiaen and Carter. His five solo discs on Bridge Records include Aleck Karis performs Schumann, Carter, Chopin; Aleck Karis: Mozart Recital; Stravinsky: Music for Piano 1911-1942; John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes; and Karis Plays Webern, Wolpe & Feldman. His two discs on Romeo Records are Piano Music of Philip Glass and Late Piano Music of Frederic Chopin. Last month, Bridge released his...
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Aleck Karis has performed recitals, chamber music, and concertos across the Americas, Europe and in China. As the pianist of the new music ensemble Speculum Musicae he has participated in over a hundred premieres and performed at major American and European festivals. His appearances with orchestra have ranged from concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin to those of Stravinsky, Messiaen and Carter. His five solo discs on Bridge Records include Aleck Karis performs Schumann, Carter, Chopin; Aleck Karis: Mozart Recital; Stravinsky: Music for Piano 1911-1942; John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes; and Karis Plays Webern, Wolpe & Feldman.
His two discs on Romeo Records are Piano Music of Philip Glass and Late Piano Music of Frederic Chopin. Last month, Bridge released his most recent disc, Feldman's haunting last work Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello. Karis has studied with William Daghlian, Artur Balsam and Beveridge Webster. He is a Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego, and Associate Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities.

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Brian Walsh (clarinet)

Blair McMillen (piano)

Blair McMillen has established himself as one of the most versatile and sought-after pianists today. The New York Times has described him as “riveting,” “prodigiously accomplished and exciting,” and as one of the piano’s “brilliant stars.” McMillen leads a multifarious musical life as pianist, chamber musician, conductor, and improviser. He thrives on playing a wide variety of musical styles: from medieval keyboard manuscripts to improvisation-based music of all types; from Classical/Romantic-era piano repertoire to the music of young 21st-century composers. Known for imaginative and daring programming, McMillen has premiered hundreds of new works both as a soloist and with numerous ensembles. He constantly collaborates with composers and artists of other genres in commissioning works that stretch the boundaries of the...
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Blair McMillen has established himself as one of the most versatile and sought-after pianists today. The New York Times has described him as “riveting,” “prodigiously accomplished and exciting,” and as one of the piano’s “brilliant stars.” McMillen leads a multifarious musical life as pianist, chamber musician, conductor, and improviser. He thrives on playing a wide variety of musical styles: from medieval keyboard manuscripts to improvisation-based music of all types; from Classical/Romantic-era piano repertoire to the music of young 21st-century composers. Known for imaginative and daring programming, McMillen has premiered hundreds of new works both as a soloist and with numerous ensembles. He constantly collaborates with composers and artists of other genres in commissioning works that stretch the boundaries of the piano and the traditional recital format.

Blair McMillen is pianist for the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, the American Modern Ensemble, and the six- piano Grand Band, among others. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Rite of Summer Music Festival, an alt-classical outdoor concert series. McMillen holds degrees from Oberlin College, the Juilliard School, and the Manhattan School of Music. He lives in New York City, and has served on the music faculty at Bard College and Conservatory since 2005.


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Justin DeHart (percussion)

Meighan Stoops (clarinet)

Nicholas Terry (percussion)

Composer(s)

Chinary Ung

Chinary Ung is often associated with that group of Asian-born composers whose music incorporates aspects of eastern musical characteristics into a western classical music setting. Aside from specific cultural and generational distinctions, the principal difference between Ung's work and theirs is that for many years he was prevented from engaging directly with the source of his cultural heritage as his native country was being torn apart by the scourge of the Khmer Rouge. Indeed, as the people and culture of Cambodia were being systematically destroyed, Ung took it upon himself to rescue some facet of the traditional music he had known as a child, reconstituting Cambodian musical traditions through his performances on the roneat-ek -- the Cambodian xylophone. This project...
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Chinary Ung is often associated with that group of Asian-born composers whose music incorporates aspects of eastern musical characteristics into a western classical music setting. Aside from specific cultural and generational distinctions, the principal difference between Ung's work and theirs is that for many years he was prevented from engaging directly with the source of his cultural heritage as his native country was being torn apart by the scourge of the Khmer Rouge. Indeed, as the people and culture of Cambodia were being systematically destroyed, Ung took it upon himself to rescue some facet of the traditional music he had known as a child, reconstituting Cambodian musical traditions through his performances on the roneat-ek -- the Cambodian xylophone. This project reflects the qualities of responsibility and of hopefulness that are so strongly a part of Ung's personality.

Ung's Cambodian roots are woven into the fabric of his identity, but the musical aspects are, as a result of his peculiar circumstance, keenly related to memory. For many years -- through the late 1980's -- Ung's music had a plaintive character in its modally-inflected, melodic behaviors, as if he were reaching back to another time uncorrupted by political tumult. Ung's work of this period established him as a major figure in American music, winning citations from virtually every major musical arts institution in his adopted country. He was the first American composer to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award, for Inner Voices. That work, along with the Spirals series indicates a self-referential artistic project where one seeks spiritual strength and inspiration through meditation and quiet contemplation, traits of Buddhist spiritual exercises. The Spirals series in particular shows an affinity for the connection between pieces.

The creative impetus draws from many sources -- such as dreams -- and there is a distinct pictorial and spiritual basis to Ung's music. Aura, a large work for two sopranos and chamber ensemble written in 2005, refers to the multicolored aura surrounding the Buddha's head. The work's extensive amplification draws the listener into the performance space, as if invited into the healing light of the Buddha. Rain of Tears, a concerto for chamber orchestra composed in 2006, commemorates the victims of natural disasters in Bandeh Aceh and New Orleans. Its many variants on rising and falling figures present a staggering interpretation of wave imagery. In this work, Ung invokes the Buddhist concept of Shunyata, which he describes as spiritual openness, in order to inspire four distinct statements of compassion.

Ung's extensive orchestral catalog has been commissioned and performed by major orchestras throughout the United States and abroad, including those in Philadelphia, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Tokyo, Sydney, Basel, as well as the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the American Composers Orchestra. Boston Modern Orchestra Project released a recording of Ung's orchestral music in 2015. Ung's work has been commissioned by the Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ford, Koussevitsky, Joyce, and Barlow Foundations. In 2014 he was given the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award by the New York-based Asian Cultural Council.

Ung recently participated in the Pacific Rim Festival at University of California Santa Cruz, where his work entitled Singing Inside Aura III, for Amplified Singing Violist and Korean Traditional Orchestra, received performances at both UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. This piece, commissioned by the Gugak Center, is projected to receive another performance in Seoul, Korea, December 2017. Additionally, the National Endowment of the Arts has extended support for the forthcoming Therigatha Inside Aura, dedicated to the peacemakers of tomorrow. This spring, Chapman University will present a Chinary Ung Portrait Concert at the new Musco Center for the Arts, and he begins his residence at Scripps College in March 2018, where Therigatha Inside Aura will be performed and recorded.

By any measure, Chinary Ung is an astonishingly prolific composer, yet his focus is rarely turned inward. Indeed, one notes in his activities as a cultural leader and educator a profound sense of responsibility to a broader cultural and societal context. In the years since the holocaust Ung has worked with numerous institutions and individuals who share his dedication toward preserving Cambodian culture and forging cultural exchanges between Asia and the West, such as The Asian Cultural Council. He was President of the Khmer Studies Institute in the U.S.A. between 1980-1985, and was an advisor for the Killing Fields Memorial and Cambodian Heritage Museum of Chicago and a member of the Cambodian-Thai cultural committee.

As an educator, Ung has taught courses in Southeast Asian music and he has instructed generations of young composers at several institutions in the United States, and now, through a series of residencies, in Asia as well. In this regard he follows the example of his mentor, Chou Wen-chung. He holds appointments at University of California, San Diego, where he is Distinguished Professor of Music, and at Chapman University, where he is a Presidential Fellow and Senior Composer in Residence. For the 2017-2018 academic year he is the Karel Husa Visiting Professor in Composition at Ithaca College. He and his wife Susan direct the Nirmita Composers Institute each summer, with the goal of providing compositional direction and opportunity to musicians from Southeast Asia.

His music is featured on recordings released on Bridge, CAMBRIA, CRI, New World, Argo, and oodiscs, among others. Chinary Ung's compositions are published exclusively by C.F. Peters Corporation and they are registered under BMI.


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