ensemble on_line vienna

Kasane – Overlaps will continue the close exploration of Chinese/Taiwanese composers and players of traditional instruments as realized by ensemble on_line vienna and AsianCultureLink in their Singing Dragons project. The programme will feature sho soloist Ko Ishikawa and shakuhachi soloist Tony Clark. In a continuous working progress compositions for mixed instruments, mostly by Western composers, will be realized. On the other hand, traditional music for the two Japanese instruments will be heard as well as a double composition of Japanese composer and pianist Yuji Takahashi, who since the 1980s has dealt intimately with traditional East Asian instruments and musical forms and who in his creation takes a pointedly oppositional stance to the colouristic and synthesizing use of Japanese instruments.

These encounters represent neither a mere comparison of European and East Asian musical traditions nor are they an attempt at levelling. Rather, the cooperation between outstanding soloists from different spheres of experience provides an opportunity for a critical examination of the overall settings of the sonic world of new music, and thereby allows a dynamic and open interplay.

All of the composers are well acquainted with this form of musical communication: soloists Ko Ishikawa and Tony Clark are widely experienced in the cooperation with musicians and composers of Western education and have successfully forayed into the borderland of improvisational and Noise music. Also, owing to their versatility and competence in traditional as well as new music they are well able to penetrate complex scores.