New Music Theatre - A Hunger ArtistOct. 21st - 22nd, 2017 Duanjun Theatre, STA
A Hunger Artist adapted from the German novelist Kafka's short story Der Hungerkünstler is a project of the genre contemporary new music theatre. A Hunger Artist divides the original novel into five scenes. It depicts "hunger art", which was very popular in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, from the perspective of starry hunger artist. The artist is sitting in a cage exhibiting his art by proving in public how long he can stay without food for some weeks – showing his capability to resist hunger. The cast of A Hunger Artist consists of a theatre actor and an ensemble for flute, cello, Saxophone, percussion and piano. The musicians also take part in the performance process exhibiting at the same time both their role as actors and musicians. Compared to musical theatre and opera in contemporary new music theatre initiated by German-Argentin composer Mauricio Kagel musicians become also some kind of actor during the performance of a piece. In addition, music functions not only as expression or for creating an atmosphere it becomes also "theatre". Therefore, the composer is not only in charge of the work's sound part but also for the script and stage effects. Another feature of this new music theatre piece is its multimediality. Multimediality is achieved by combining real-time instrumental performance and theatre performance as well as preset and real-time video to scaffold and extend the audience's three-dimensional stage mood to a multi-level sense experience.
Song Yang
Song Yang (1985 - ), doctoral student of composition in Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, study with Prof. Guoping Jia.; student of Konzertexamen at the the Kölner Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in the class of Prof. Johannes Schöllhorn; PhD candidate of systematic musicology at University of Cologne with supervisor Univ.-Prof. Dr. Uwe Seifert. She was awarded the Scholarship from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) in 2015 and Fu Chengxian Memorial Scholarship in 2016. She got the Commission of the Young Artist Project from China Art Foundation in 2015, and the commission from the American Juilliard School Focus Festival in 2017; she got the 3rd prize of 2017 Vareler Kompositionspreis in Germany, 1st prize of 2015 Singapore Ding Yi Music Company’s (DYMC) Composition Prize, 1st prize of The 2nd Voice of China Composition Competition and so on. In the year of 2015, she got the commission of one orchestration piece by the Young Creative Artist Funded Project from China National Art Foundation. Her pieces including Orchestration, chamber music, electronic music, dance drama and so on, were performed in 2017 Kammermusiktage am Vareler Hafen, 2017 KISD parcours Cologne, 2016 New Music Week of Shanghai Conservatory of Music, the Ferneyhough’s composition workshop of 2016 Darmstadt 48th Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik, 2015 Beijing Modern Music Festival and so on, used to work with Berlin Kairos-Quartett, Con Tempo Ensemble Beijing, Israel Contemporary Players, Holland Nieuw Ensemble.
