Product Information

 

This score album presents four new collaborative compositions for flute created as part of Lin's art music project from 2015 to 2019:

• “Dai Village” for flute and piano (2016), composed by Alex McGery, uses pentatonic scales in the melodic lines of the flute and relentless rhythmic patterns in piano part. It is combined with diatonic harmonies and bass ostinatos to depict an image of life in the Dai village.

• “The Whispering Moon” for flute and percussion (2017), composed by Martin Gaughan, uses narrative-like atonal flute melodies with breathy tone colours derived from Dai hulusi playing, and percussion sonorities to create the atmosphere of the mythical story about the Dai people’s belief that their music comes from water.

• “Book of Dreams II” for flute and string quartet (2017), composed by Basil Athanasiadis, combines flute melodies derived from Dai hulusi playing with repetitive melodic patterns played by strings with varying lengths to create a polychromatic tapestry recalling the imagery of traditional Dai textiles.

• “Sang Liang & Shao Yu” for flute, string quartet and percussion (2017), composed by Sandy, is based on the legend of the creation of the Dai hulusi. The flute concerto explores the hulusi music “Ancient Melodies” said to have been played by the male character of the legend, Sang Liang, and follows the narrative with diatonic harmonies. The percussion helps to create tension during the second movement, “The Storm”, whilst often using water sounds to connect the story to water as a central theme. Both the second and third movement require improvisation for the soloist based on the supplied cell materials.

 

The unique feature of this art music project has been the composer-performer collaboration that allowed the flautist to take a creative role by adding embellishments to the composed melodies. The embellishments are  based on the style of hulusi playing of the Dai people in Lianghe, China, transplanted and developed with modern flute techniques in line with Lin's aesthetic preferences. Flute melodies are transformed by being intertwined with personalised embellishments extensively, leading the finished music into new artistic visions. The annotated embellishments are represented in the flute parts.