La Jolla Symphony Premiere to Include Telematic Approach Featuring Geisel Library Chimes

On Saturday, May 2 and Sunday, May 3, UC San Diego’s La Jolla Symphony & Chorus will premiere The Moon in La Jolla, the 2015 winner of the prestigious Nee Commission Award. Composed by UC San Diego Ph.D. candidate and Hong Kong composer Yeung-ping Chen, this orchestral piece features telematic technology which allows musicians to play music together from different sites via the internet. At the May concerts, the audience in UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium will experience the Geisel Library chimes (rooftop clock/carillon) as they interact with La Jolla Symphony through this telematic approach.

Yeung-ping Chen’s innovative musical piece is based on a poem, The Moon in La Jolla, written by Hong Kong poet and UC San Diego alumnus Leung Ping-Kwan, also known by the pen name Yasi. Leung Ping-Kwan crafted the poem when he was studying at UC San Diego in the late 1970s.

Since this orchestral work is tailor-made for the Geisel Library chimes and because April is National Poetry Month, the Library is hosting a special exhibition and reading to celebrate this intersection of poetry and music. All are welcome to gather outside on the Forum Level of the Library at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 21, where special guest Suyin Mak, Hong Kong music theorist and poet (CUHK Professor and currently a scholar-in-residence at UCLA), read the Yasi poem. UC San Diego carillonneur, Scott Paulson, will perform chiming musical passages of Yeung-ping Chen’s composition in response to the imaginative poem.

Immediately after the reading, the audience is invited into a Library exhibition area (Geisel West, 1st floor) for refreshments. The composer, carillonneur, and Visual Arts student Kim Garcia– collabora  tors of The Moon in La Jolla exhibit — will be on hand to discuss and explain the displayed items, some of which have been donated by Yasi’s widow for this event. They will also share the experience of collaboration, emphasizing Yasi’s works and his memories of life at UC San Diego, showing a parallel view of composer Yeung-ping Chen, and examining the special fellowship between poet Yasi, composer “Ping” and their various mentors.