simon hutchinson

This has been a very choral month for me with a reading from Revalia, an Estonian men’s choir, and a performance by Sospiro, a Eugene-based new music choir under the directorship of Chris Prosser.

I composed both of these pieces in September, and, due to time constraints, chose to set two short poems by Emily Dickinson:

Touch lightly Nature’s sweet Guitar
Unless thou know’st the Tune
Or every Bird will point at thee
Because a Bard too soon —

…and…

In this short Life
That only lasts an hour
How much — how little — is
Within our power

I really enjoy Dickinson’s pithiness probably for the same reasons that I admire Basho’s haiku, and the focus on humanity (as opposed to haiku’s focus on nature and imagery) gave me a lot to work with. Although I hadn’t intended so when I composed them, I think that the pair makes a nice set, probably because I composed them so close together in time, and at such a rate I wasn’t aware of how much each piece was borrowing from the other!

Enjoy:

Touch lightly Nature’s sweet Guitar
for mixed choir, performed by Sospiro; Chris Olin, conductor

In this short Life
for men’s choir, performed by Revalia

Happy Halloween!

Recently, I’ve been playing around with some sound design using recorded shamisen sounds, and I found that filmusik, a group up in Portland, OR, that re-scores public domain films for live performance, was asking for submissions to score a couple of short clips of one of my favorite movies of all time….

Gamera vs. Guiron

They’ve posted the submissions and you can check them out via the link below. Mine are a little more abstract than the others (which are also amazing!), maybe I’m not quite cut out for this film-scoring thing.

But it was a whole lot of fun.

filmusik’s monster movie music

Apologies again for the delay. As I was working on polishing the audio for these pieces, my friend and fellow composer/organizer for these concerts, Young-Shin Choi, sent me the versions that he made, and they sound great! Thanks Young-shin!

These concerts were a wonderful experience, and the hard work of all the participants (and many secret supporters on the sidelines) made them a great success. It’s truly a joy to be able to work together with performers and professionals of this caliber in producing our art. I look forward to doing it again soon!

Ewha, Nabi (2009)

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Hye Jung Yoon, Soprano;
Yu-Sun Kim, gayageum.

right-click here to download video

Gwangpunge deollin ewha omyeo gamyeo nali daga
Gajie motoreugo geomijule geolligeoda
Jeo geomi nakhwain jul moreugo nabi jabdeut hareonda.

Falling pear-blossoms whirl madly about in the wind,
Unable to return to the tree; they are caught in spiders webs
And those spiders pounce on them, thinking they are butterflies

-Yi Chongbo (1693-1766)

five (2009)

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You-Jin Chung, piri;
Yu-Sun Kim, gayageum;
Noah Meites, flugelhorn;
Daniel Brown, cello;
Emma Heffernan, violin.

Things in sets of five:
toes,
flower petals,
quintuplets
diamond rings,
quintets.

This piece was written for the 2009 concert series, “consonance,” with performances in Japan in Korea. For some time now I have been fascinated by the potential for international interchange through music, and, with the help of my wonderful friends and colleagues, I have been fortunate enough to have opportunities to try to enact this dialog.

And, finally, as a bonus, here’s the fixed-media version of “Ewha, Nabi.”

Ewha, Nabi (2009)

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I’ve arrived back in Eugene after my summer travels and have been working through the 300-something eMails in my inbox that need to be addressed.

I’m taking a break now to update this page because it’s been a long time since the “consonance concerts” have been “coming up.”

We’re still working on making the best possible audio files from the three concerts, but I wanted to post a few photos from the concerts in the meantime.

Enjoy!

click on the “comments” link for more photos.

Just a reminder that I have an upcoming concert tour that is a collaboration composers and performers from the US and Korea with western and Korean tradition instruments. We’ve all been working extremely hard to subsidize our own costs of promotion and rental of space (not to mention composing and practicing), and we’re hoping to have some wonderful audiences to support our efforts.

If you are around, please check out our concerts:

in Kitakami, JAPAN,

Tokyo, JAPAN,

and Seoul, SOUTH KOREA.

From June 30th through July 10, I had a wonderful time participating in the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium (OBFCS). In part this was thanks to the wonderful performers, the Fireworks Ensemble, who premiered my piece, Zephyr, for flute, electric guitar, piano, and amplified contrabass, and in part it was thanks to the wonderful participants, composers from all across the county.

Of course the energy that manifests when so many people with a similar interest gather together is thrilling, but with other interactions with composers (as with most musicians), I often feel there is a tendency toward competition, and the need to prove oneself by pointing out shortcomings in other composers’ pieces. I’m not immune to this myself, and I’m trying harder and harder to control myself (and my raging ego). The environment at the OBFCS, however, was that of cooperation, and that we, as artists, are working together to forward new music. Because of this we were able to listen to all the music presented with a less combative ear, and gain a perspective on where we are as both individuals, and as a group.

I haven’t received the recording yet, and I will post it here when I do. For the meantime, enjoy this blurry photo of me introducing my piece in Beall Hall.

Starting next fall, I will be acting as the director of the TaiHei Ensemble, a new music group in Eugene that performs works inspired by cross-cultural communication across the Pacific Rim. I’m very excited about this, as, of course, I’m fascinated by the potential of international dialog through music, and I’m interested to be working on a different end of the process of musical creation.

TaiHeiEnsemble.com

Anyway, now I’m looking to build our library of works by living composers, so I’m holding a call for scores. Please share your music with us.