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Zubin Kanga

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Zubin Kanga (born 1982) is a Sydney-born pianist, composer, and musicologist based in London. He specialises in contemporary and experimental music.

Early Life and Education

Kanga was born in Sydney. He attended Sydney Grammar School until 2000 and graduated from the University of Sydney in 2006.[1] He moved to London in 2007, where he is still resident. Kanga attended the Royal Academy of Music, receiving an MMus in 2009 and a PhD in 2014. He studied the piano under Rolf Hind.[2]

Career

Kanga joined Australian contemporary music group Ensemble Offspring in 2005 at the age of 22 [3] and is still a member.[4]

He was awarded "Best Newcomer" in the 2010 ABC Limelight Awards.

In January 2011, he and Hind performed Beat Furrer's concerto for two pianos Nuun with the London Sinfonietta.[5][6] He played Thomas Adès's Concerto Conciso in 2013 at the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, appearing alongside the composer in his two-piano arrangement of Conlon Nancarrow's Studies Nos. 6 and 7.[7]

Kanga performed his realisation for eight hands at two pianos of Julis Eastman's Gay Guerilla at London Contemporary Music Festival in 2016, alongside Hind, Siwan Rhys, and Eliza McCarthy.[8] Their performance also features (uncredited) in video installation The Third Part of the Third Measure.[9]

At the 2016 Cheltenham Music Festival, Kanga gave the British premier of Michel van der Aa's Transit for piano, electronics and video. He also performed Patrick Nunn's Morphosis for piano, live electronics, and motion sensors, which he commissioned.[10] His Melbourne Festival performance of John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes received critical acclaim.[11]

Kanga's composition Dead Leaves was selected to represent Australia at the 2018 International Rostrum of Composers[12]. He premiered the piece on ABC Classic radio in 2017.[13] He appeared at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2018 with his programme Wikipiano, named after a commissioned piece by Alexander Schubert, Wiki piano.net.[14] The score of is derived from a web page which members of the public can edit by adding text, directions, notation, images, and YouTube videos.[15] Each performance is consequently different from the next. Kanga appeared alongside composer and violist Brett Dean at the 2018 Extended Play new music marathon, premiering Dean's Rooms of Elsinore and Kanga's Spider Web Castle.[16]

Kanga's 2019 Australian tour Piano Ex Machina received critical acclaim, described as "a rewarding experience, rich in possibility, infused with curiosity and playfulness, and not afraid to explore conceptual and expressive horizons well beyond the boundaries of a traditional piano recital".[17]

Research

Between 2013 and 2016, Kanga was a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Nice Sophia Antipolis as part of the GEMME (Music and Gesture) project in partnership with IRCAM.[18] He was made an Honorary Research Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 2014[19] and an Honorary Research Associate of Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney in 2017.[20] He was an Institute of Musical Research Early Career Associate from 2014 to 2015.[21]

Kanga is currently Leverhulme Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London.[22]

Discography

  • 2014: Not Music Yet (HHCD06140743, Hospital Hill)
  • 2015: Orfordness: Music by David Gorton (MSV 28550 Divine Art Records)
  • 2015: Piano Inside Out (MD 3391, Move)
  • 2015: Chiaroscuro: modern works for soprano and piano (PR0003 Phosphor Records) with Jane Sheldon.
  • 2016: Patrick Nunn: Morphosis (RSR003CD, Red Sock Records)
  • 2018: In the Theatre of Air (NMC D248, NMC Recordings) with the Marsyas Trio. This reached #7 in the Specialist Classical Charts[23] and was named on Sequenza21's "Best Chamber Music CDs of 2018".[24]

Publications

Kanga, Zubin. "Through the Screen: The Collaborative Creation of Works for Piano and Video", Contemporary Music Review, Vol 35, No. 4, 2016: 423-449.

Kanga, Zubin and Alexander Schubert. "Gesture, Technology and the New Discipline: Conversations with Alexander Schubert", Contemporary Music Review, Vol 35, No. 4, 2016: 375-378.

Kanga, Zubin. ‘“Building an instrument” in the collaborative composition and performance of works for piano and live electronics’, in Perspectives on Artistic Research, ed. Robert Burke and Andrys Osman (Washington DC: Lexington, 2016).

Gorton, David and Zubin Kanga. “Risky Business: negotiating virtuosity in the collaborative creation of Orfordness for solo piano” in Music and/as Process, ed. Lauren Redhead and Vanessa Hawes (Cambridge:Cambridge Scholars, 2016).

Callis, Sarah, Neil Heyde, Zubin Kanga and Olivia Sham. “Creative Resistance as a Performative Tool”, Music and Practice, vol. 2, 2015.

Kanga, Zubin. “Not Music Yet: Graphic Notation as a Catalyst for Collaborative Metamorphosis”, Eras Journal, vol. 16, no.1, 2014: 37-58.

Ratcliffe, Robert, Jon Weinel and Zubin Kanga: “Mutations (megamix): Exploring Notions of the ‘DJ set’, ‘Mashup’ and ‘Remix’ through Live Piano-based Performace”, eContact!, Canadian Electroacoustic Community, 2011.

References

  1. ^ Barr, Philip (November 2007). "Music Medal". Grammar Foundations: Newsletter of the Sydney Grammar School Foundation. No. 37. p. 3. Retrieved 12 May 2019. for the last two years, the winners of the Sydney University Medal in Music have been Old Sydneians ... Chris may and Zubin Kanga (shared in 2006).
  2. ^ "Zubin Kanga: musical trials and tribulations". Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  3. ^ "Noisy Egg Nests". Digital Repository: Ensemble Offspring. Retrieved 18 May 2019. Zubin Kanga has been playing with Ensemble Offspring since 2005.
  4. ^ "About Us". Ensemble Offspring. Retrieved 18 May 2019.
  5. ^ Hewett, Ivan. "London Sinfonietta, Queen Elizabeth Hall, review". The Telegraph. Retrieved 18 May 2019.
  6. ^ Clements, Andrew. "London Sinfonietta/Beat Furrer – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 May 2019.
  7. ^ Duffy, Martin. "Ades' Life Story". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  8. ^ Clements, Andrew. "In Search of Julius Eastman review – fine performances of an elusive anarchist". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  9. ^ The Otolith Group (2018). "British Films Directory". British Council Film. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  10. ^ Clements, Andrew. "Review". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  11. ^ O'Connell, Clive (13 October 2016). "Melbourne Festival review: Zubin Kanga captivates with blaze of creative brilliance". The Age. Retrieved 19 May 2019. Kanga's interpretation was engrossing, the work's mutable rhythmic steadiness and continuous juxtaposition of pointillism with colour-washes accomplished splendidly, the performance reaching a serenely illuminating climax across the last two sonatas, where the gentle clangour generated by this gifted pianist invested the festival with a blaze of retrospective creative brilliance.
  12. ^ "2018 International Rostrum of Composers". ABC. 17 May 2018. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  13. ^ New Waves (23 Feb 2018). "Evenings at Peggy's - Jane Sheldon and Zubin Kanga". ABC Classic. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  14. ^ Driver, Paul (2018-11-25). "Classical review: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival". ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2019-05-19.
  15. ^ "Zubin Kanga: musical trials and tribulations". Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  16. ^ McPherson, Angus (2 Aug 2018). "Extended Play: a new music perfect storm". Limelight. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  17. ^ Wilkie, Ben (11 Apr 2019). "Piano Ex Machina (Zubin Kanga)". Limelight. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  18. ^ "Événements à venir". CTL Université Nice. Retrieved 19 May 2019. Zubin Kanga, Post-doctorant au laboratoire CTEL
  19. ^ "Staff". Royal Academy of Music. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  20. ^ "Academic Staff". Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  21. ^ "List of IMR Fellows". Institute of Musical Research. Archived from the original on 12 April 2015. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  22. ^ "Researchers". Royal Holloway, University of London. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  23. ^ "Official Specialist Classical Chart Top 30 26 October 2018 - 01 November 2018". Official Charts. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  24. ^ Carey, Christian. "Best Chamber Music CDs of 2018". Sequenza21. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
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