Sonic Responses invites eight musicians and one composer to respond to the changed aural conditions of UBC’s outdoor spaces. Their music making confronts and enters into a dialogue with the quiet that currently resides on campus. Responding to different locales and situations, the repertoire for Sonic Responses stretches across a broad range of traditions.
“Earth” is the first piece of the cycle “Pao Xiu Luo Lan” by Chinese composer Xijin Liu written for the konghou, more widely known as the Chinese harp. The series includes the seven fundamental elements of Buddhism. Using the entire range of the instrument, the piece creates a serene atmosphere that symbolizes the merging of heaven and earth. In reflecting upon its meaning, Ko writes: “No matter how abundantly rich one’s life can be, the cycle of life is such that we cannot escape death and our fate to vanish beneath the soil of the earth.” “Earth” is performed within the empty breezeway that separates the locked buildings of the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability and the Pacific Museum of Earth.
Sonic Responses furthers the collaborations between the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the School of Music that will continue through Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts (Fall 2020). The project is led by Barbara Cole, Curator of Outdoor Art, David Metzer, Professor of Musicology and Chair of the University Art Committee, and Judith Valerie Engel, a doctoral candidate in piano performance.
Sonic Responses was initiated by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in collaboration with the School of Music and supported by the British Columbia Arts Council’s Arts and Culture Resilience Supplemental Award and UBC’s Catalyzing Research Clusters Program.
Images (above and below): Rachel Topham Photography
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Nathania Ko on Chinese harp performing “Earth,” the first piece of the cycle “Pao Xiu Luo Lan” by Xijiin Liu as part of Sonic Responses, a collaboration between the UBC Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the School of Music. Performed between the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability and the Pacific Museum of Earth at the University of British Columbia located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people.
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