Birth and Death

Jennifer Tham and the SYC Ensemble Singers explore the rubric of contemporary classical choral music in a concert of commissioned works.

Birth and Death - Five Songs for Thich Nhat Hanh was commissioned by the choir for its 40th anniversary in 2004. The work is based on a four-line poem by Vietnamese poet and activist, Thich Nhat Hanh that consists of only two Chinese characters, sheng (life) and si (death) arranged in a way to produce significant meaning. Through five movements, composer Hoh Chung Shih uses the sounds of the text to explore different elements of sound, from more ostensible chiming of bells to distorted echoes to more discerning shades of tone colour while producing diverse soundscapes for the audience.

The choir will also perform new works written for them by Stephen Leek, Corrado Margutti and Vytautas Miškinis. Miškinis' Time is Endless was premiered by the choir in Indonesia in June 2008, while Margutti's D'amore e d'ombre and Leek's burrinjuck will receive first performances in Tokyo in January 2009.