Sandia Ang, soprano; Ryu-Kyung Kim, mezzo-soprano; Zheng Zhou, baritone; Min Xiao Fen, pipa; Diana Herold, vibraphone, percussion; Patti Monson, piccolo, flute, alto flute; William Schimmel, accordion; Michiyo Suzuki, B flat clarinet, bass clarinet; Satoshi Takeishi, percussion; Tomas Ulrich, cello; Wang Guowei, gaohu, erhu, zhonghu; Juan Carlos Rivas, conductor
Jason Kao Hwang (b 1957) is a highly respected improviser who also has a number of compositions and film scores to his credit. The Floating Box is a major contemporary work that gives voice not only to the Asian immigrant experience in America in particular but also to the immigrant experience in general.
With the collaboration of librettist Catherine Filloux, The Floating Box is an original story inspired by the oral histories of Chinese-Americans living in Chinatown. The story of Eva/Yee-Wa, a young Chinese-American woman living with her mother, is the story of many diasporic peoples who have sought a better life in new, often harsh surroundings. The poetry of Filloux's libretto fuses perfectly with Hwang's eclectic score, beautifully capturing the complex, intimate relationships among these three characters.
The opera employs both Chinese and Western instruments in an ensemble of eight players: piccolo/flute/alto flute; B-flat clarinet/bass clarinet; vibraphone; pipa (Chinese lute); accordion; percussion, including Tibetan chimes and singing bowls, whirling air tubes, Chinese tom toms, and a Buddhist fan drum; erhu/gaohu/zhonghu (a family of two-stringed Chinese violins categorized as huqin); and cello.
In Hwang's skilled hands, these instruments together forge a rich amalgam of sound－in the composer's words, "complex suspensions rather than homogenous solutions." The precision with which Hwang mines each instrument's sonic possibilities and the imaginative ways with which he draws upon subsets of the full ensemble result in a vibrant musical narrative that propels the drama forward to its conclusion. The kaleidoscopic range of musical styles employed－atonality, blues, Broadway, Chinese opera, chromaticism, impressionism, jazz, pop－establishes The Floating Box as the work of an artist who is completely comfortable bridging multiple musical worlds.
Jason Kao Hwang: The Floating Box
| MP3/320 | $19.99 | |
| WAV | $19.99 | |
| 2xCD | $31.98 |
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Prologue
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Burial Rites
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Break
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I Will Stay Here
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When I First Came Here By Boat
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You Paper, Ah-Mah
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I Know This Song
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What Are You Waiting For?
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Where Are You Going, Eva?
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Didn't You Ever Wish You Could Stop?
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So This Is A Kiss
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Our First Meal Of The Day
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Yee-Wa, Will You Return The Boxes?
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Floating, Floating
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Like He Did? Like He Did?
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Gusty Winds
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Who Will Return The Boxes To The Factory?
Jason Kao Hwang
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What Are You Waiting For ?
Jason Kao Hwang
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Yee-Wa?
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So Dry
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They Told Me I Could Not Practice
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My Boss Goes To The Ship's Rail
Jason Kao Hwang
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I Retrieve It
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My Father?
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Searching
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Alone
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When We First Arrived, Yee-Wa
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Why Did You Never Tell Me?
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Why, Bah-Bah?
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You Threw Chrysanthemums?
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When Your Heart Stopped
Jason Kao Hwang
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Does Your Heart Still Beat?
Jason Kao Hwang
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Floating, Surging
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