Thursday 27 September 2012

'This Is How To Live' @ 2 Willow Rd.

The performance of my string quartet at 2 Willow Rd. was a great success (considering I had written the string quartet in 2 1/2 days, and the players only got half an hour to learn and rehearse it)! The night was filled with art, culture, interesting people, garlic-y hummus, macarons, spicy haloumi and specially mixed gin. 

2 Willow Rd. is the house of architect Ernö Goldfinger and his artist wife, Ursula (which is now in the care of the National Trust). Interesting fact which I learnt: Ian Fleming lived just down the road from Goldfinger, and disliked him, hence why he named the James Bond villain after Goldfinger!

I was asked to compose the string quartet last minute by a friend of mine, and the purpose was for it to be performed alongside an exhibition of a sound installation by Zachary Eastwood-Bloom, created from 3D scans of objects collected by Goldfinger here:


The piece itself, is based on the textures, materials, shapes and sizes of the objects. Which coincidentally is a pretty similar idea to scanning the objects and then transferring it into sound using computer software. It meant that the visitors could hear both electronic and human interpretations. 

Everything in the house was very protected, and almost everything could not be touched (which meant there were hardly any chairs people could sit on even though there were chairs everywhere). We also did not realise there would be no music stands so... we had to improvise. (Thank you to my viola player who had blu tac on him):



A recording/video of the performance will be uploaded soon on my website www.catherinecheung.org




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