composition 3

For International Women’s Day, So Wrong It's Right wanted to make some serious noise for female artists from medieval and pre-medieval times. We broke ground at National Sawdust musing on three remarkable women who formed a deep bedrock of source material for our recording session that evening. For each woman, we dedicated a station that showcased their work, a quasi-installation which dotted the room and formed a route for our exploration. The evening began with a feminist found object jam, a playground of private items from our loved one’s arsenals.

At the first station, we paid tribute to Comtessa de Dia (1175 A.D.) who wrote the earliest surviving work by a trobairitz (female troubadour). Following this, we interpreted three poems by the Greek poet Sappho (630 B.C.) from the island of Lesbos. The third station focused on a beautifully preserved kufic script by the Islamic calligraphist Fadhl Mawlat Abi Ayyub (~907 A.D.)

Game for Audience and Improvisors

Premiere: December 6, 2017 Jazz Performance Space The New School, Manhattan, NY, USA

composer Kalun Leung

documentation Peter Brensinger

I have been enamoured by the idea of Schubertiads for many years and even wrote a business plan in 2013 to launch series that would be dedicated to presenting chamber music in informal settings. Since then, I have been interested in participatory and immersive art, works that give audiences more creative involvement both actively and passively, and, in the case of Twisted Twister, give them compositional control and pacing.

Ultimately, for me, music is a social and community building endeavor. The 75-year Harvard study on happiness proves that the secret to living longer and healthier is good relationships. This is my attempt, albeit in a forcefully physical manner, to bring people together and have fun. So have fun, make friends, and swap instagrams!