Alice Hoi-ching Yeung / Rebecca Saunders

Sonic Ritual is a percussion trio work that delves into the hidden sounds of percussion, exploring the profound connection between percussionists and their instruments. Through precise coordination and nuanced gestures, the composition uncovers a dialogue between sound and movement, inviting audiences to contemplate the semiotics of percussion.
The performers become conduits, not only for creating sound but also for inputting the communications and intentions behind each note. As they engage with their instruments, a symbiotic relationship emerges, where the percussionists and their instruments become extensions of one another. Sonic Ritual transcends traditional performance, offering a visceral experience where the boundaries between performer and instrument blur. Through the intricate interplay of sound and gesture, the essence of percussion ensemble is distilled into a ritual that resonates the power of connection, both between performers and their instruments, and among each other.

Alice Hoi-Ching Yeung

Skull (2023) forms the final part of a triptych together with the works Skin (2016) and Scar (2019). In Skull the instrumentation differs from the other works: the central timbral focus lies with the lower range of the wind and brass instruments, and the piano and e-guitar are replaced with an analogue electric Korg BX3 draw-bar organ. Simultaneously, Skull pursues a complex web of lyrical polyphony. Skull partially draws on Skin and Scar, setting up passing points of reference, and reflecting on timbral fragments, individual gestures and sounds inherent to the earlier works. These fragments are both diffused and condensed, transformed and mutated, and seek to delve from the outermost surface of the acoustic body to the edge of the innermost, of consciousness – as it were, to the skeletal essence within. This quotation from Haruki Murakami’s Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World elucidates this central image: “The skull is enveloped in a profound silence that seems nothingness itself. The silence does not reside on the surface, but is held like smoke within. It is unfathomable, eternal, a disembodied vision cast upon a point in the void”.

Rebecca Saunders