Taman Suara nr 1 Buluh (opus 60 nr 1)

Programme notes

Taman Suara comprises two pieces, buluh and pontianak, composed by Robert Casteels in 2007 for a series of concerts entitled Music, plants and food. This interdisciplinary event explored man’s relationship with the environment, first through the performance of pieces of music inspired by food or about food, then through the creation of two new installations by Bob Verschueren, and finally, through the interaction between the audience and the ‘ambulant kitchen’ by Thorsten Baensch and Christine Dupuis. In the Malay language, Taman Suara means garden sound and buluh means bamboo. In response to Verschueren’s installation VII-07 in which pieces of bamboo in harmonious shades of green were precisely cut and arranged in rows of decreasing height and space, Casteels superimposed layers of music with actual bamboo sounds to create a verdant and lush soundscape. One sudden and short effervescent outburst wittily subtitled ‘bamboogie’ hardly disturbs the jungle haunted by four nocturnal calls, four cantilenas played by the oboe. Taman Suara buluh is indeed a sonic concotion made by mixing together several, often unusual, different ingredients, implying a mixture that is new and perhaps strange.

Handwritten sketches and drafts

see black cover, A4 size, 154 pages and green cover logbook #3

Completion of the composition 

20-VIII-2007

Analysis

see Taman Suara: keys to the musical language (2008) under Articles

Programme booklet

see Food, Plants and Music (2007) (ISBN 978-981-08-0188-5) under Articles including the following:

- Essay

Bob Verschueren: from wind paintings through vegetable installations to The Catalogue of Plants (2004)

- Bamboo and Banana Trees

two poems by Dominique Sintobin (2007)

- Essay by S Ho

The Electric Guitar, Icon of Popular Music (2007) 

- Essay by Lee S K

The music of Robert Casteels (2007)

Recording

link #1 is the audio of the premiere

Score follower

link #2