Still and Still
Still and Still (2024) • piano
Performed by Ashley Zhang
Piano Spheres Series
Thayer Hall, Los Angeles
Performed by Ashley Zhang
Piano Spheres Series
Thayer Hall, Los Angeles
Program notes for Still & Still:
While writing this piece, two events deeply marked me: the assassination of Alexey Navalny and the first arrests of politicians responsible for plotting the assassination of Marielle Franco. Both political activists – Navalny in Russia, Franco in Brazil – were relentless in their opposition against injustice, corruption and tyranny. Despite their enormous popularity and political prominence, their assassinations were overt, their perpetrators didn’t bother to hide. It was a chilling message: fascism is awake and hungry.
I wish I could believe in ghosts and believe that wonderful people continue to exist despite no longer having a physical presence. It would bring me a comforting feeling that I can’t get with reality. But my music can be delirious and establish ghosts, such as the never played, but always heard F and A chords (F for Franco, A for Alexey). Although these chords are not played as chords, they emerge, ghost-like, when the physicality of the hands of the performer is suspended: when the increasingly oppressive swinging pendulum (low-high, left-right) stops, we can actually listen to absence. Not silence, but absence.
In this piece I was interested in the emotional stretch that absence creates and observing what we do to ourselves when confronted with the emptiness created by a presence that is yanked from existence. I was also interested in the value of building stillness and internal quietude, amongst the external loudness. I wanted to create stillness so to listen to the gone voices that are still relevant.
While writing this piece, two events deeply marked me: the assassination of Alexey Navalny and the first arrests of politicians responsible for plotting the assassination of Marielle Franco. Both political activists – Navalny in Russia, Franco in Brazil – were relentless in their opposition against injustice, corruption and tyranny. Despite their enormous popularity and political prominence, their assassinations were overt, their perpetrators didn’t bother to hide. It was a chilling message: fascism is awake and hungry.
I wish I could believe in ghosts and believe that wonderful people continue to exist despite no longer having a physical presence. It would bring me a comforting feeling that I can’t get with reality. But my music can be delirious and establish ghosts, such as the never played, but always heard F and A chords (F for Franco, A for Alexey). Although these chords are not played as chords, they emerge, ghost-like, when the physicality of the hands of the performer is suspended: when the increasingly oppressive swinging pendulum (low-high, left-right) stops, we can actually listen to absence. Not silence, but absence.
In this piece I was interested in the emotional stretch that absence creates and observing what we do to ourselves when confronted with the emptiness created by a presence that is yanked from existence. I was also interested in the value of building stillness and internal quietude, amongst the external loudness. I wanted to create stillness so to listen to the gone voices that are still relevant.
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