Summer 2021 – for Dá Gu and Multimedia is an exploration of climate change, which has become so evident in much of the world that the issue is beginning to dominate political discourse. In the piece, nature recordings are mixed with instrumental actions and effects in such a way that they form a sonic unity. There are three parts that blend into each other. The first part mixes short pulses of light and recorded lightning with thunder sounds and drum rolls, and after a build-up leads into the second part, in which rain sounds are slowly faded into water drop recordings. These in turn gradually morph into the third part. In this part, we hear the 60s song “Raindrops keep falling on my head” first in fragments of 8 superimposed versions, synchronized with each other in key and tempo, along with the Dá Gǔ Ensemble’s accompaniment, also synchronized. These fragments continually lengthen until the whole song comes to light and the piece comes to a close.
My thanks to James Cheung for his help in realizing this composition.
Dà Gǔ Ensemble (Lin Chen, Yang-Hung Huang, Elman Mecid, Yu Xia) and Georg Hajdu, electronics