reaching up, touching down for string quartet (2015)

reaching up, touching down is written for the RTHK Quartet to be premiered in the SOUND-IMAGination: Hong Kong Landscape project in the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity, as one of the commissioned pieces by the Hong Kong Composers’ Guild. The project explores and fosters relationships between sound and image inspired by the modern cityscape of Hong Kong.
 
This piece explores different perspectives of Hong Kong’s cityscape, particularly of the perspective looking from below. It is inspired by an image by photographer Wong Mei-yin. The image portrays a person lying on a rooftop amid city noise, facing up against the sunshine but with the face covered. The music re-imagines and vitalizes the sound world surrounding the subject, as though the collage of city noise uncovers his/her face, rising up to above and beyond the infinite layers of Hong Kong’s modern cityscape. The image is projected to a large screen during the premiere.

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