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“(His) approach tends to emphasize systems as situations, which are composed in advance, and from/through which musical works emerge”
Dr John Ferguson, 2020
Arthur is a music-technologist, composer and horn-player with a particular interest in the compositional augmentation of live acoustic material via technology, especially through techniques such as live-sampling, feedback and granular synthesis. In addition to his current live electroacoustic work he is also active in the field of electronic fixed-media composition (musique concrète).
A brass player from a young age, he played tenor saxhorn and trumpet before studying horn with Jamie Hersch and composition with Dr Zecheriah Goh at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore, during which he gained a strong interest and valuable experience in composing and performing acoustic music, especially for chamber ensembles. As a composer, his output spans works from solos to orchestral-scale pieces, drawing on influences ranging from Ravel to Ligeti, in an idiom that has been described by his tutors and peers as “systematic, transparent and organic”. An active freelance performer for several years after, he has performed with such ensembles as the ADDO Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonic Winds, The Young Musicians’ Foundation Orchestra (TYMFO), and the Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra. He has also served as a band instructor, teaching brass and horn at numerous high-school wind bands.
His interest in new music and music technology came through the discovery of spectral music via the works of Tristan Murail, Gerard Grisey et al. During this period he studied with Dr Joyce Koh and Dr PerMagnus Lindborg, through which he was introduced to fixed-media electronic composition, and later interactive music systems such as Max MSP. His output over those years include fixed-media pieces such as Lines of Eliot and Musica metrica, as well as the live electroacoustic work Acute Staccatitis.
As of 2019, he studies music technology under Dr John Ferguson at the Queensland Conservatorium, developing an ever-expanding repertoire of electroacoustic works in varied formats, but with particular focus on the practice of live-sampled performance on horn utilizing real-time signal processing. Most recently, he has turned his efforts towards improvisation, or “spontaneous composition”, as a means of interacting with such real-time systems. He is fascinated by topics such as the democratization of music-making, the transition from postmodern to metamodern, liveness and the interaction-interpretation spectrum, and the conceptual erosion of notation and repertoire in the 21st-century. “(His) approach tends to emphasize systems as situations, which are composed in advance, and from/through which musical works emerge”; (Dr J. Ferguson, 2020).