Concert is cancelled in Hong Kong, two weeks before the performance, almost two months after paying for the air ticket. It is perfectly fine if a concert has to be cancelled due to varies reasons (better be real good reasons), but the fact that the director did not intend to inform me about the cancellation, until I happened to ask him about the concert, on Facebook. Seriously, this is not even a professional vs. amateur issue; this is about responsibility. Should I have signed a contract before I decided to attend the performance? I guess a paper is more trust-able than a person, which is sad. This person calls himself a professional musician and a teacher, which is even more sad---way to corrupt an entire generation of musician. Teachers should really learn about moral issues before they are allowed to teach, especially, young kids.

I never learned about fraud in school---way to spend an international air ticket to learn just that. Worth it?

It feels like I have been composing a lot this semester, but I actually haven't written that much. My bass trombone quartet commission is coming very slowly. I have this urge to finish it ASAP--don't know whether it's a good thing or not. Perhaps I am just anxious about commissions, that I want to see a finished product as quick as possible. I am, however, very satisfied with my recent completed piece Katachi IV for alto saxophone and live electronics. I can see my style slowly changing and evolving. Honestly, I would have never imagined it be like this, say, five years ago. I am excited, and anxious to see what's next.

More travels are ahead of me: Bowling Green, Hong Kong, Iowa... as much as I love traveling, I am broke.

Had three concerts in four days! It was a lot, but hey, can't complain! My music is being played! What could be better than that? (don't know if it's ever gonna happen again---I mean, three concerts in four days!)

The symposium at Connecticut College was a great experience. I met many musicians/artists, and made me feel that, we are all in this TOGETHER! Daniel was a great performer. It was a somewhat different interpretation, and that's what's fantastic about live performances! There was a slight feedback issue towards the middle of the piece because of how the speakers were placed (sorta weird position...), but everything else went well. And, a new commission for piccolo violin!

Wish I had time to drive to Boston or New York City... Oh well. Stay at airport for the whole night just to save this one night's hotel fee, worth it?

Still contemplating on my idea of starting the ALEA series. Perhaps I should just embed this idea into my Katachi IV, which will be a commission for saxophone and live electronics. It might be hard to justify having the live electronics completely aleatoric, but I'm sure that makes it very comfortable for the performer. The patch would be very easy to make basing on all these templates that I have developed lately. I just need to map out the range of the effects and their relative amplitudes to the raw input level.

I have also been toying with this idea of compiling my patches into applications and make them available for download. Max/MSP, however, did not like this idea and crashed my laptop, so that I could NEVER use the program again... There, perhaps, is a better way to do it. But isn't it awesome that others can make cool sounds with my patches?

#

Non-electronically, I am working on a commission for flute, cello, bass trombone and percussion , very slowly. Originally intended as a collection of five pieces, I might cut some and just make each one longer.

I have been quite busy, not composing, but patching with Max/MSP, just exploring different ways to route my signals and building instruments/effect modules. The results are couple patches that I can well use in the future, and I also generated a fixed media piece (Stargaze) with them.

I am expecting to write one new fixed media and two new interactive electroacoustic pieces with these patches. I will continue the Katachi series, and start a new series called ALEA.

#

And, having come back from the UAHuntsville New Music Festival this weekend, I feel fresh and inspired. It was a nice event with seven concerts and over 40 guest composers. Duo for Two Flutists (2008) was performed.

I haven't visited this blog for so long... I feel like it's time to write something. It has been a real adventure this first semester at UMKC - it's difficult, but I know I wouldn't like it if it's too easy.

I just finished a paper on Lutoslawski couple days ago, and am quite satisfied with it. I also read many of his writings and interviews. There is something he said that is so interesting (irrelevant to my paper topic): L regarded two main trends of music in the 20th century, that of the Second Viennese School's and Debussy's heirs'. The Second Viennese School is generally regarded as the complete opposite to the main stream because they disregarded the function of pitches by equally distributing the chromatic scale, but L suggested that they were the one that continued the tradition by completely disregarding it. The other pole was Debussy's harmonic language, which completely revolutionized functional music and its order and construction.

I could not agree more. Schoenberg consciously avoided tonal function; Debussy just ignored it.

I am liking Kansas City. There seems to be everything here, except for a job... This is looking to be a great academic year. I'll be studying with Chen Yi this semester!

Here comes the end of my summer vacation, again. I'll miss Hong Kong dearly.The longer I stay here, the more I feel that I cannot be seperated from this city - its people, its culture, its spirit, its breath...

This summer has been great! Mum and sister came for two weeks, and we took a road trip in the mid-west and around the east coast; we visited cities and places including:

1. Chicago, Premiums outlets;
2. Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo;
3. Niagara Falls;
4. New York City - Statue of Liberty, Time Square, bus tour, Top of the Rock on Rockfeller Center, etc.
5. New York City - Met Museum of Art, Central Park;
6. Philly - Independence Hall, National Constitution Center, Liberty Bell, City Hall, etc.;
7. Washington D.C. - Capitol Building, Lincoln Memorial, White House, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History/Air and Space, etc., Shenandoah National Park;
8. Shenandoah National Park

It was SO tiring... now rest for a couple days before I head to Hong Kong!