You are in a park. There are kids running circles around parents who stand and talk. Other people are walking through the park briskly on their way to work, or slowly strolling, taking in the scene. Everyone is moving at different speeds. But all breath the same air, walk on two legs. This is a metaphor for what you hear in CONSENSUS, a work that is based on the notes G and A and the perfect fifth that sounds above these two notes: D and E. Classically-trained musicians of many of the world’s cultures increasingly want to play music together, and want to play with musicians from oral traditions. A great synthesis is underway. With so many different approaches to creating and playing music, such a project has great challenges. But regardless of the musician’s musical background or training, there is one thing most can agree on: that music was born of about four or five notes. My work is a way for musicians to get together to play a piece based on the notes D, E, G & A.
Consensus was commissioned by the Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble in 2007 and first performed by them, under the composer’s direction, on November 9, 2007 at the Norman Rothstein Theatre in Vancouver, Canada. The original score was performed on 8 instruments: dizi, erhu, pipa, drum set, zheng, classical guitar, zhongruan, and electric bass. When the Sound of Dragon Ensemble artistic director Lan Tung asked me to create a version for her group, I had the opportunity to revise the score to make the work stronger. The Sound of Dragon version is now the final version, although other instruments may be added or substituted, in the spirit of the original idea.
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