"Dark Tales" Tour 2023-24 (Canada Council - Arts Abroad)
“Hello…
…Do you know why I’m here?
To hunger…?
…Hunger for what? ”
“A memory.
A story.
A taste called sweetness.
This is what you hunger for. ”
“Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.”
Program
Chapter One: Find Me In The Future
“Find Me In The Future” from Howl's Moving Castle Joe Hisaishi (1950-)/Wesley Chu (1991-)
Chapter Two: My Room is White-Washed
Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 7 Fazil Say (1970 - )
I. Melancholy
II. Grotesque
III. Perpetuum Mobile
IV. Anonym
V. Melancholy (Da Capo)
Chapter Three: Furioso
Sonata for Violin and Piano Dinuk Wijeratne (1978-)
III. Furioso
-intermission-
Chapter Four: Lady Lazarus
Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op 80 Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
I. Andante assai
II. Allegro brusco
III. Andante
IV. Allegrissimo – Andante assai
Duo Perdendosi’s second tour, “Dark Tales”, explores an immersive fairy tale experience combining the arts of written, visual, and musical storytelling. Featuring works by Turkish, Sri Lankan, Chinese, Japanese, Canadian, and European composers.
This program intersects the topics of research being pursued by the ensemble: the dark-cute aesthetic found in macabre fairy tales and the science of embodied experiences.
Project Context
Art forms. "Dark Tales" is an immersive violin-piano concert experience combining the arts of written, visual, and musical storytelling. The project brings to life an original macabre fairytale with music by contemporary Sri Lankan-Canadian composer Dinuk Wijeratne, Chinese-Canadian composer Alice Ping Yee Ho, Turkish composer Fazil Say, and Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi as well as classical Czech composer Leoš Janáček and Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. This project will be presented by Montreal-based violin-piano duo, Canadian Chinese pianist Tong Wang and American Indian violinist Maitreyi Muralidharan, in collaboration with host organizations and cultural ambassadors from Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania - Olah Vilmos, director of the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Georgiana Fodor, university lecturer at the Gheorghe Dima National Music Academy.
This program brings to life Japanese Studio Ghibli animation film scores alongside classical masterworks that highlight the dark and surreal sides of fairytale stories. Moreover, the performance will showcase innovative artistic research by exploring the dark-cute aesthetics in music and the science of embodied experiences, thus intersecting modern topics of musicology and music performance science research being pursued by the lead artists. There will be additional audio-visual components that will aid the storytelling process– original picture book illustrations, nature soundscape recordings, and short animated videos. These components will form an immersive concert experience that will elicit embodied reactions in the audience, which will be measured by interactive features built into the concert scheme, including word and body maps. This tour’s unique design combining various art forms strengthens the relationship between new music, science, and aesthetics, presenting Canadian musicians and composers at the forefront of interactive classical performance.
Tour reasoning. The issues of diaspora populations’ representation of their culture and identity is increasingly relevant. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, I have presented various anti-racism and political themed concerts around Canada. In 2023, I toured my solo album “Us” across Europe, featuring works by living Chinese, Indian, Turkish, African, and Ukrainian composers to celebrate diversity and foster more compassionate cultural communication. On this tour, I encountered further challenges and setbacks of discrimination and racism due to European populations’ traditions, prejudices, or even subconscious reactions stemming from a deep rooted fear of the unknown and unfamiliar. These reactions were particularly prominent in eastern Europe, including Austria and Hungary. Thus, I am motivated to continue embracing the challenge of building pathways to facilitate open-minded and open-hearted listening in a time of increasing turmoil and darkness, specifically in eastern Europe, a challenging yet important territory to charter in advocacy for our mission to represent the diversity of Canada’s artistic potential and outputs. This project again reminds people from vastly different circumstances and backgrounds of the connectedness in our shared humanity through music and storytelling. We will represent the diversity of Asian-Canadian heritages and cultures, and pave a path towards future collaborations that is rooted in respect, humility, and kindness. Artistically, we have also chosen eastern Europe specifically for the mysterious and unique setting of medieval castles. Presenting this eclectic selection of music in spaces dating back to the 1500's will shed a new light on contemporary Canadian music, combining the old and new in strange and bizarre ways that are at times playful and sweet, at times dark and surreal.
Anticipated outcomes. This project will continue to develop my international presence as a performing artist, social entrepreneur, and leader of arts activism initiatives. I have been growing my network in Europe during the past 3 years by presenting creative programming projects at music festivals, premiering and touring new works by Canadian composers, and nurturing lasting relationships with local communities and audiences. By returning to eastern Europe with a fresh interdisciplinary concert program that reinforces core values of fostering cross-cultural connections and celebration of artistic exchange, we are not only advocating for the diversity of Canadian arts but also inviting engagement and participation from local cultural ambassadors, presenders, and colleagues to generate future collaborations.
Curating this interactive experience with distinguished presenters from Hungary and Romania will promote multifaceted elements of Canadian arts practices ranging from unique voices of diaspora contemporary classical composers, interdisciplinary performances by immigrant musicians, and innovative experiments in musicology and performance science research. A key element of my work as a cultural ambassador is to create platforms for fellow artists to share their work both locally and abroad. In the long term, our work will also build a new presence and pathway for future Canadian artists to collaborate and exchange ideas with artists, presenters, and audiences in eastern Europe, a region still unfamiliar with the unique and diverse offerings of Canada’s new initiatives in the performing arts.