Since coming to Washington State College from Malaysia in August, Yii Kah Hoe has ventured along with his microphone into close by woods and forests, alongside rivers and streams, and even out onto an icy pond to seize the music of nature.
An internationally acknowledged musician and composer, and the college’s first Fulbright scholar in residence, Yii is educating, researching and persevering with his inventive work of composing soundscapes that incorporate components from nature and intention to lift environmental consciousness.
He’ll premiere his latest composition, Of the Land, created in and in regards to the Palouse, on March 4 at 7:30 p.m. within the Elson S. Floyd Cultural Heart. The free, public presentation, which is a part of the 2023 Pageant of Up to date Artists in Music, will function sounds of native nature and performances by music college Aaron Agulay, baritone, and Keri McCarthy, English horn.
Members of the viewers additionally will play an element within the manufacturing, Yii mentioned. Listeners will have the ability to transfer by the sounds emanating from audio system situated throughout the house and contribute to the shifting, Palouse-based soundscape. “It is going to successfully remodel the viewers into performers in my music,” he mentioned.
The composition, which Yii spent 5 months getting ready, is a compilation of soundscape recordings from greater than 12 completely different nature parks, many within the Pullman space and a few in Idaho.
The English horn and baritone strains he wrote into the piece mirror the sounds of “Persona,” the wind-activated sound sculpture that stands atop Terrill Library close to the Faculty of Music, mentioned McCarthy, director of the varsity. “It’s a lovely and distinctive composition, and I’m excited for our neighborhood members to listen to it.”
Pullman-area college students in fourth grade by highschool shall be handled to an encore manufacturing on the Floyd Heart on March 10, McCarthy mentioned. “We sit up for speaking about sounds and music with Pullman’s younger musicians and artists.”
McCarthy described Yii’s music as dynamic and colourful, reflecting components of density and light-weight discovered within the brushstrokes of Chinese language calligraphy and in addition conventional music components of Malaysia, China and Indonesia. “His music typically options fast, leaping passages interspersed with generally wild, and generally heat, gradual passages of timbral curiosity,” she mentioned.
Yii’s compositions incorporate the textures and rhythms of conventional musics from quite a few ethnic communities all through Southeast Asia, he mentioned. They’re additionally knowledgeable by his background as a visible artist. “I at all times remodel a visible notion into the sounds in my music,” he mentioned.
Yii is a senior lecturer at SEGi School in Subang Jaya, Malaysia, and is acknowledged as a significant voice amongst Southeast Asian composers of his technology. His typically daring and avant-garde music has been extensively carried out throughout Asia, the USA and Europe.
He’s additionally achieved as an improviser on two kinds of Chinese language flutes, the dizi and xiao, and his works use sounds and rhythms of these and plenty of different conventional devices from numerous cultures.
He has received a lot of worldwide awards for his music and, in 2018, he obtained the Nationwide Excellent Educator Award from the Personal Schooling Cooperative of Malaysia.
For the previous 12 years, Yii has been lively in environmental safety and attempting to attach music and activism in Malaysia. “I actually imagine that music and public artwork can play an element in elevating individuals’s consciousness of social, political and financial points,” he mentioned.
“Professor Yii’s advocacy for environmental consciousness is spectacular, notably because it pertains to deforestation in his native Borneo,” McCarthy mentioned. “He has researched sound frequencies in recordings of the rainforests and decided the kinds of bugs, birds and different animals which might be first and most impacted by these altering environments.”
Since 2008, McCarthy has collaborated with Yii on a lot of music occasions in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and China. She inspired him to use for the Fulbright residency at WSU based mostly on his broad vary {of professional} experiences, pursuits and experience.
At WSU, Yii has taught about musical improvisation, soundscapes and constructions and has labored with college students enthusiastic about composition. Earlier this yr, he spoke about his work to music college students on the College of Idaho, and final fall, he performed an Asian bamboo flute, referred to as a suling, at a music and poetry occasion to lift consciousness about environmental preservation alongside Missouri Flat Creek in Pullman.
This spring, Yii will educate WSU college students throughout disciplines about Malaysia, its atmosphere and its music for a historical past course within the UCORE Roots of Up to date Points program. He may also ship a speak about music and the atmosphere for WSU’s First-12 months Packages.