The Imagined is a new album of piano music by Alice Ping Yee Ho played by Christina Petrowska Quilico. There are four works. The first is Pictures from an Imagined Exhibitiion which riffs off pictures by Hong Kong ink master Wesley Tongson and Christina Petrowska Quilico herself. There are four movements. “Free Strokes” is kind of minimalist with arpeggios and repeated figures. It sounds weird to say it but it sounds “watery”. “Distant Drums” is similar in some ways but faster and with some much darker passages. “Mystical Mountains” by contrast is slower and darker with a kind of doom-laden quality. Finally “Dancing Colours” is bright and playful with, I think, some modal elements. It’s all quite virtuosic with occasional distinctly “non-western” touches.
The Imagined
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Chinatown; music by Alice Ho, words by Madeleine Thien and Paul Yee, is a multilingual opera about the Chinese immigrant experience in British Columbia. It ws commissioned by Vancouver City Opera where it played in 2022. It’s now been recorded for CD by the original cast.
VOICEBOX:Opera in Concert announced their 2023/24 season. It’s quite interesting; three Verdi rarities:
Blaze is a record of (mostly) solo piano music by Alice Ping Yee Ho played by Christina Petrowska Quilico. There are eight pieces on the disk adding up to just over an hour of music. It’s quite varied. There are pieces like the title track which are colourful and intricate with others like “Shade” being slower and, perhaps, more lyrical. It’s all highly virtuosic requiring not just excellent orthodox technique but quite a bit in the way of extended technique. It needs more than technique too as this is music with a lot going on that needs to be interpreted sensitively. The performances are really impressive.
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