Hands Like Waves Unfold (2007)

Composer Kui Dong has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the Other Minds Festival that stretches back to the third festival in 1996. Her skills as an improviser are well noted and incubated in workshops at Dartmouth College with Christian Wolff and Larry Polansky. On Other Minds' Hands Like Waves Unfold, Kui Dong strikes out on her own in 10 prepared piano improvisations recorded at Dartmouth in 2005. Half of the pieces were recorded on a piano prepared after a plan by John Cage executed by one of Kui Dong's ... Read More

Composer Kui Dong has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the Other Minds Festival that stretches back to the third festival in 1996. Her skills as an improviser are well noted and incubated in workshops at Dartmouth College with Christian Wolff and Larry Polansky. On Other Minds' Hands Like Waves Unfold, Kui Dong strikes out on her own in 10 prepared piano improvisations recorded at Dartmouth in 2005. Half of the pieces were recorded on a piano prepared after a plan by John Cage executed by one of Kui Dong's students; rather than pull the preparations out after it took eight hours for the student to set them up, she decided to have a little fun and record some improvisations on it. Later she made a complimentary series of recordings in which Kui Dong devised her own preparations; small bells, paper, small metal sticks, and other things. She also plays inside the body of the instrument with her fingers.In certain pieces where the Cage preparations are used, the "Cagean" sound of the piano... Read Less