I’m very happy that my proposal to the 2025 College Music Society (CMS) National Conference has been accepted and look forward to presenting my work in Spokane, Washington this November. My presentation, titled “Neon Sounds: Building Community Through Music and Historic Preservation”, centers on my most recent premiere, a multimedia project from last March in Hong Kong. In addition to my presentation, I’m looking forward to connecting with colleagues. I’ve participated in a number of regional, national, and international CMS conferences and have always left feeling better about the field and with several new friends. Here’s the abstract to my presentation:
This presentation provides an overview of Neon Sounds, a recent interdisciplinary arts collaboration in Hong Kong, and explores a global perspective on how music can help to preserve cultural memory amid social change. The multi-year project was built around decommissioned historic neon signs from Hong Kong businesses and how they could be given new life and new meaning by staging them with site-specific music compositions. The broader goal of this project was to seek new ways to form meaningful social connections between arts organizations and local grassroots communities. In this way, the collaboration brought together local composers, performers, architects, historic preservationists, lighting designers, neon craftsmen, and small business owners and produced four world premiere multi-media compositions at Hong Kong Arts Centre in 2024. The staging included a neon choreography, in which the neon lights reacted to the music in real time. The presentation will discuss the project’s background and key personnel, approaches to artistic collaboration, challenges encountered, and possible future directions, and will include video excerpts from the premiere performances.