Join the incredible violinist and composer Fung Chern Hwei as he creates using the EB Session: New York City! Chern Hwei performs and tours extensively with the string quartets Sirius Quartet and Seven)Suns. Along with creating using the EB Method, Chern Hwei takes the time to tell us a little about his creative process and how he keeps his projects on track. Be sure to check it out!
Being one of the most sought after musicians in New York City, Fung Chern Hwei is an active violinist, violist, composer and arranger, both in the States and beyond. Throughout his career spanning over fifteen years, he has worked with composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (the Yellow Magic Orchestra, composer for The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, The Revenant), Huang Ruo (first composer-in-residence of Het Concertgebuow Amsterdam, director of Ensemble FIRE), John Williams (legendary film composer), John Corigliano (renowned American composer, Oscar-winner composer forThe Red Violin), Paul Chihara (American concert and film composer), Billy Martin(drummer, Medeski, Martin and Wood), Tony Bennett (legendary jazz singer), Bobby McFerrin (legendary American jazz vocalist and conductor, composer and performer ofDon’t Worry Be Happy), Stanley Clarke (former bass player of Chick Corea’s Return to Forever), Kim Dong Won (Korean traditional musician, member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble) and many more. Other than veteran musicians, he also works extensively with young up-and-coming master musicians, such as pianist John Escreet (Antonio Sanchez’s Migration), bass player Linda May Han Oh (Pat Metheny) and singer-guitarist Camila Meza. He recorded full-length albums with the latter two, both highly anticipated, and to be released in 2018. Earlier this year in Malaysia, he received his second BOH Cameronian Arts Award for the Best Solo Instrumental Performance category.
He performs and tours extensively with the string quartets Sirius Quartet and Seven)Suns, both groups perform some of the most unconventional original music. With Sirius Quartet, he appeared in the Beijing Music Festival, Tianjin Jazz Festival and Taichung International Jazz Festival.
As a composer, he will be the composer-in-residence at the 2018 Newburyport Chamber Music Festival. Other than that, he also co-scored Malaysian film director Ho Yuhang’s 2017 action feature, Mrs. K. The film score received very positive reactions from both audience and critics in the Busan Film Festival, Taiwan’s Golden Horse Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, and the Singapore International Film Festival.
As an educator, he has been giving workshops and masterclasses around the world, including internationally renowned music institutions, such as Germany’s Munich Conservatory, Hannover Conservatory, Stuttgart Conservatory, Lübeck Conservatory, Bern Conservatory in Switzerland, Beijing Contemporary Music Academy in China and Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. He also served as a faculty member of New York City’s Mannes College of Music.
Links:
Sirius Quartet:
Seven)Suns:
Meadow Muffins:
Sounds in the New York City Session
- Tip for Luigi
- Outside Convent Ave Baptist Church – Harlem
- Shuman Running Track
- Leaving Port Authority Bus Terminal
- Subway Ride
- Leaky Hydrant Harlem
- Chinatown Street Corner
- 9/11 Memorial
- Entering Building
- Transfer Available for BCD12 Train
- Steelpan Underground
- Times Square Free Syria Rally
- Lost
- Cement Truck
Lucas’s Result
He held the photo in his hand. Photomagnetic. Polarized light. For his eyes only. Only for the price of $20,000. 22500 with the tip. Too bad daddy didn’t pay for Ben’s eyes. They belonged to the church megacorps.
He always thought church was a bad idea when he was a kid. Always running out of the VR pews to take a piss, at least that’s what he told his dad. He was really playing games in the stall. That ended when Master Preacher caught wind of Ben’s plans and cued the bathroom cams on him. Good thing he was playing games and not taking a shit or jacking off.
Anyway, Ben ended up giving himself to the Great LCD Tree for the sake a loan on his fancy eyes. That and a lifetime membership for the shitty buffet.
Crap. Salisbury steak again. Actually, he liked the Salisbury steak. The old ladies riding the metro next to him probably didn’t though. Not with that breath.
So this photo. It looked like a polaroid. At least that’s what wikiVR told him it looked like. In it was a couple skating. There was a good crowd behind them. Them man looked not so sure on the skates, maybe like he was going to break an ankle. His mother, that’s who these people were in this fading polarized picture, his mother and his father, she had a big smile. Ben’s mom always complained that his dad never took her out anymore. Maybe she missed times like this. Before he got religious.
Ben got off on his exit in Chinatown. The smells were good here. Old trinkets and Peking duck. Pennsylvania Dutch girls walking around with laser guns pointing out everything that they wished to inherit in the afterlife. Ben watched in awe as on with a white bonnet shot across the street into an arcade right into a guys eyeball. It was tough to tell if the who had been intentional or not.
Was she pointing at the jackoff cabinet? That was a machine in the arcade, not the guy? Or was she pointing at the guy?
Was anybody else seeing this stuff? wondered Ben? Nobody seemed to be paying that much attention. He did have the fancy eyes after all. But nobody gave a damn anymore. Good possibility.
“Hey pal!” yelled Ben as he flung himself on a terrified-looking woman. This was the thing to do these days. Catch reality off guard, might find the fabric of time or something. It beat dropping nukes on countries, claiming you were saving the rest of us from some jack in the rift.
“Which way we going, up or down?” yelled Ben.
Carolyn’s Result
A stranger in the crowd says I love you,
someone else – mi amor – someone else : sorry,
“it’s slow,” “thank you,” “hey daddy,”
someone kissing, all this very fast,
rushed – a lack of hush – a choir
in between sets – and all this praise?
a fleet of feet – footsteps rubber and tar,
metal and stone – the material the foundation
the immaterial the reach – the spire,
the spine – the organ only itself with all its pipes,
the steam engine nothing without its smoke,
the elevator – the ether – the red headed
third rail lit up yellow caution, rumble,
all these bricks broken – someone made them.
“Excuse me – do you live here?”
No city without its people. Nothing more suspicious
than a place empty of souls that should have been a crowd.
The circle in the square.
The spray of the fountain somewhere its reservoir.
It’s flow frantic – a release sputtered,
a speaker, a grain press – a silo, a hillside.
Voices carved into the earth, a recording.
Fossilized. A groove in the record.
The blur, the ridge, a needle, a cyclone,
a code tearing through a block.
A wall. A door. A long quick step.
A misstep. I am angry with you.
I don’t know why. I do know why.
I don’t want to admit it.
There are versions of me within me
who scratch out all the parts,
I am a theater hidden inside a steel tabernacle;
I look beyond me. Beyond you.
The numbers are going up. The bricks are lifting themselves.