About the Project

Between January and September 2021, I was one of four composers commissioned by Donaueschinger Musiktage to collectively compose a new work for the award-winning Omnibus Ensemble (based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the festival. The other composers were: Onur Dülger (Turkey), Piyawat Louilarpprasert (Thailand), and Qin Yi (China). In October 2021, we were able to meet in Donaueschingen for some final rehearsals and conversations, and then presented the music at Donaueschinger Musiktage 2021 (Donaueschingen) and Akademie Der Künste (Berlin).

Each of the four composers worked closely with Omnibus Ensemble to create works, expressions, sketches, and ideas that could collectively be melded into a seamless performance in which audiences would not know where the work of one composer starts and the work of another ends. This was a collective attempt to question the idea of the singular author in music composition while also thinking about how a collective development of a composite work may result in a fundamentally different sort of result that could not have been realized under traditional circumstances.