Ears of the Book (2024)

Composer note
The soloist is the narrator of the story. We listen to her, telling us encounters that fan out like folds of skin.

Ears of the Book, footnote of a paragraph.

Shu-er, 書⽿, a word used in the ancient Chinese book binding technique, in literal translation, means the ear of the bookmark where titles of each section would be notated.

Rather than dividing into movements or sections, I saw polaroids of scenes shot. Each polaroid, a snapshot in an emotive mosaic. As in our daily life, these polaroids appear unexpectedly on the streets, on our kitchen counters, in our key holders dish bowls, scattered around deep corners of our living space, we see the moments frozen in time, and our memories relive them, yet again, for us. Our lives, intertwined threads never broken.

The work begins with whiffs of the Nanyin, a Fujianese opera style (from southern China). It is my own footnote of a sonic state with which I resonate.

These sonic moments ebb and flow quickly with the orchestra and morph into other lands before taking their own shapes. An interjection, a migration to an elsewhere.

Thank you to Wu Man, for giving me inspirations on the pipa. More importantly, together we attempted to work against the grains of the pipa, finding new territories for this instrument to venture into. And so, we decided together, for the Chinese title, the ears of the book could also mean an intent listening to the stories, of the frozen polaroids that are yet to be told.

— Du Yun, Dec. 2023, Shanghai, China