Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung - The Ninth Tone

NOMINATION: Work of the Year - Chamber

NOMINATION: Work of the Year - Chamber

Chamber music is defined as works for between 1 and 12 players, with or without vocal parts, and with or without electronics A work is defined as a single complete musical composition, or expression. This includes music with movements or sub-works (i.e. song cycles), installations, and real-time compositions (improvised music).

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Nominee

Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung

Title of the work

The Ninth Tone

Performer

Sally Ann McIntyre, Mindy Meng Wang, Kaylie Melville, Jasmin Wing Yin Leung

Performance Date

1/12/2024

Venue

Chinese Museum

Nominator Statement
""The 9th Tone," is an hour long original chamber music work composed by Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung. Produced by Speak Percussion and conceived within the historically resonant context of the oldest continuous Chinese settlement outside of Asia (Melbourne's Chinatown), the work offers a nuanced reimagining of Chinese Australian musical legacy through the lens of chamber art music.

Leung's composition directly challenges reductive "east meets west" narratives, acknowledging the long and complex history of Chinese musical presence in Australia. "The 9th Tone" explores the possibilities of what Chinese Australian music can be, moving beyond essentialist representations of cultural identity. The composition's innovative use of extended rational intonation to find mathematical truths between echoes and places of historical significance, the tangible materiality of primary sources from the 1800s such as grammaphone records, direct second hand musical memory of erhu song taught through familial relations, speculative impulse responses, and the invisible architecture of the electromagnetic sphere creates a "hauntological reimagining" of this history. This composition was made in collaboration with McIntyre, Wang, and Melville, each artist bringing a highly sensitive, personal frame of understanding 'cultural forgetting'. For its innovative approach, its thoughtful engagement with cultural history, and its compelling artistic realization of the latest theories in rational intonation theory, "The 9th Tone" merits recognition as Chamber Work of the Year.

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