***
Trio Allsymt was to have its first performance under this name tomorrow, but something tragic and totally unexpected happened: our dear friend Arnaud Lechat passed away on the morning of September 19 while being out for a walk. He inspired many of us with his playing, composing, organising, talking, thinking. We won’t have our first concert as a trio under our new name. But Arnaud left us a website which he put together last weekend, looking back at how we,”Three Free Guys” played together, without the name Allsymt: https://allsymt.wordpress.com/.
Arnaud, come and listen tomorrow, we play in your honour. Bon voyage dans l’éternel, salut!
For the concert we found Lin Hsiao Feng willing to replace Arnaud.
***
In 2021 Taipei pianist Lee Shih-Yang formed a new trio with wind instrument / percussion player Arnaud Lechat and vocal performer Mark van Tongeren, playing frequently in the greater Taipei area. Independently of each other, Lee and Lechat had over a decade of collaborations with dancers behind them. Van Tongeren played and recorded in music-theatre projects in unusual acoustic and architectural settings since the 1990s.
From 2024, the trio Lee – Lechat – van Tongeren continues as ALLsymt, an acronym of the musicians’ initials.
For the exhibition 高美館30周年鉅獻 英國泰德現代美術館《CAPTURING THE MOMENT》 瞬間──穿越繪畫與攝影之旅 in the Kaohsiung Fine Arts Museum ALLsymt created new pieces. They use the museum lobby, the passage to the art works it holds, to interrogate the relationship between photography and painting, realism and simulacrum, makers and perceivers. They create a musical lens enabling visitors to “hear” a specific selection of paintings on exhibit, by questioning the complex relationships between acoustic event and situated, individual perception. Some of the techniques they use to achieve this effect are spatial projection of the sound by acoustic means, moving sound sources, and extremely slow and silent passages.
The paintings that feature in Allsymt’s interpretations are, in order of appearance:
Piece 1 Feeling the Space. Not based on painting
Piece 2 based on The Sea by Sugimoto
Piece 3 based on Motifs by Warhol
Piece 4 based on Face by Bacon
Piece 5 based on Aunt Marianne by Richter
Piece 6 based on A Sudden Gust of Wind by Jeff Wall
Piece 7 Interfering with space. Not based on painting
For more about the musicians you can check out the special Allsymt page. Their current project draws from their ecclectic range of muliti-disciplinary backgrounds and involves dancer Chan Ya-Chun. She recently graduated from the University of Taipei department of dance and was first invited by Lechat for collaborative performances. Currently, she is a freelance performer, dance art creator and performance art teacher. She likes to explore her own possibilities through experimentation and improvisation in dance art. At the same time, she continues to collaborate with different choreographers in Taiwan and abroad and takes the opportunity to dance and create in different places.
詹雅淳 Chan Ya Chun
臺中人，北漂青年。畢業於臺北市立大學舞蹈系。現為自由接案表演者、舞蹈藝術創作者、表演藝術老師，在舞蹈中喜歡實驗與嘗試各種可能性。
近期經歷為參與2024年臺北藝穗節共創作品《Lady W & Lady M》與2022年的《童話故事 人生事故》。於2023年獲得菁霖美國舞蹈節獎學金，同年與音樂家Arnaud Lechat 、Mark Van Tongeren共同演出《夢境》等等。
Lechat and van Tongeren have already collaborated with Zhan for the project Le Rêve, based on the painting of the same name by Henri Rousseau. A recording of that project’s music is due to be released in October 2024 and is available for pre-ordering on Bandcamp.
Le Rêve by Henri Rousseau (1910)
Album cover, Le Rêve by Lechat / van Tongeren (2024)
Exhibition:
高美館30周年鉅獻 英國泰德現代美術館
《CAPTURING THE MOMENT》
瞬間──穿越繪畫與攝影之旅
in the Kaohsiung Fine Arts Museum.
The performance takes place on Friday evening, September 20 at 19:30.
