DESCRIPTION:
The music of master composer lok khru UNG Chinary played by Eric Huebner at the 66th American Music Festival at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC (March 15, 2015). Roger Reynolds, Pulitzer Prize in music, who curated the festival made the following program note: " Seven Mirrors: Given his penchant for an instrumental approach that involves sliding, swelling, modulating sounds, it is no wonder that Chinary Ung was wary of composing a work for solo piano. The rigidity of the piano attack and the relative lack of control over its decay meant that he
could not rely upon practices already perfected; however, when one dimension of music is suppressed, another can emerge in profile. In this case, time became central to the work.
In Ung’s music, one rarely encounters an orderly succession of events that corresponds to the Western tradition of musical time. Rather, there are suspension and silence. The latter is considered sacred space in the Buddhist tradition, while suspension — the separate and singular sound event — would seem to be a companion idea. Seven Mirrors is a set of short pieces that have the quality of interludes. Some of the titles are drawn from writings by Tagore (movement four’s “laughter passes over the earth”) or by Rumi (movement five’s “space between the fish and the moon”). These aphorisms allow Ung to create an interpretive sound world to match his conception of the poetry. Rather than hearing an idea sound, transform, and recur (as in a sonata), Ung’s listeners hear it sound and resonate". Eric Huebner is a virtuoso pianist from the New York Philarmonic Orchestra and assistant professor at Buffalo University. Enjoy the music and performance recorded on my smartphone !

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http://amara.org/v/GhPE/