Hong Kong New Music Ensemble Perform John Zorn and More

Description

There’s a good reason that there are few opportunities to hear the works of John Zorn performed live in Hong Kong. For one, the avant-garde American composer’s pieces are liable to boggle the unprepared listener; for another, his iconoclastic approach to genre, composition and notation baffle, if not offend, many conventionally academically trained musicians. 

Not the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble (HKNME), who here present Zorn’s landmark 1984 work Cobra — an experimental masterpiece the ensemble returns to after first performing it more than a decade ago. An improvised, “game piece” Cobra has no score or even pre-conceived musical ideas. Instead, musicians perform spontaneously, governed by a detailed set of rules, cued by a prompter who serves as something between a conductor and master of ceremonies.

It is a fitting piece to close a brave 2025/26 season which had spontaneity and playfulness baked into its DNA, returning to the central theme of “Game / Play.” Also on the final programme, titled [Sound\Bridges] Interplay of Sound, are works by 20th century composers Mauricio Kagel and Frederic Rzewski, plus a new piece by Linus Fung, the committed clarinet and composer among Hong Kong’s leading proponents of avant-garde sound.

A standalone 90-minute lecture and demonstration takes place at 17:00, before the concert begins at 20:00.

UPDATE: Following an intervention from representatives of John Zorn, Cobra has been removed from the programme. HKNME will now perform Timbre Studies by Ken Ueno in its place.