Annelies VAN PARYS

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Annelies VAN PARYS

Participating Project	Exchange Residency Program (Creators from abroad)
Activity Based	Gent (Belgium)
City	Tokyo
Period	2022.6 - 2022.7

Purpose of the residency

During residencies, on the one hand there is an enhanced concentration on your own work since “everyday life” is put on hold, on the other hand, there are the other residents who are also creatives and can be very inspiring. For me the high level of this residency as well as the fact that lots of different disciplines are represented, was very motivational. And of course Tokyo is a surplus. A huge and very diverse city. Apart from that: I’m about to start a piece inspired by Nô theatre so I sincerely hope to do some investigations there.

Plan during the residency

• Research around Nô theatre: musical and theatrical aspects and notational forms.
  
• Composition of Music-theatre Piece: “Notwehr” for the Biennale Musica of Venice.
• First sketches for “Prey” inspired by Nô theatre for Klara Festival and Ictus Ensemble.
  
• A short piece for Exaudi Vocal Ensemble

Activities during the residency

During my residency I composed two new pieces. The first one, [im]patience was a small choir piece for EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble for the Linos Festival in Cologne, the second a chamber opera for the Venice Biennale Musica that will be premiered in September. When not writing, I did research about Noh Theatre for PREY, a future project with Ictus and Klara Festival that will be written in Autumn (premère in March 2023). For this, I visited performances and a rehearsal and spoke to Noh-singer Ryoko Aoki. In my free-time I strolled around in Tokyo to get the feeling of such a huge metropole and gave a guest class in the composition class of prof. Keiko Harada.

Outcome of the residency

• The opportunity to work concentrated on a daily base made me realize I need to even focus more on writing and maybe less on teaching.
• Also the fact that working during the hours Europe is sleeping is a real bliss. I didn’t realize the full impact beforehand, but it gave so much peace to be able to work undisturbed by calls, mails etc. In the future I will try to actively create these environments of enhanced concentration.
• But actually also talking to co-residents and talking to staff as well as the meetings with a few fellow composers were all very intense experiences that changed me a lot and provided tons of inspiration for the next years to come.
• Another very impressive moment was the walking through one of the large parks (I think Shinjuku) where I first heard the famous extremely loud cicadas and was inspired for a song.

[im]patience 2022, video with score, Live recording EXAUDI at Linos Festival

Creator Information