Review | Hong Kong Arts Festival’s multimedia choral concert Garden of Repose reimagines works by Brahms, Arvo Pärt, Poulenc and Antonia Lotti
- The 70-minute immersive experience at the West Kowloon Cultural District’s Freespace curates a diverse playlist following the arc of the Catholic funeral mass
- Central to the experience is the 16-member Hong Kong vocal ensemble Noema, led by its founding conductor, Sanders Lau
From the mixtape to the playlist, curating disparate music around a central theme has become something almost anyone with basic technology can do at home. So where does that leave the music professionals, particularly ones with fresh ideas who truly want to raise the programmatic bar?
One can certainly imagine “Garden of Repose” – before it became an actual garden – starting out with the working title “Requiem Playlist”, but the multimedia choral concert commissioned and produced by the Hong Kong Arts Festival has evolved into something entirely different.
The 70-minute immersive experience at the West Kowloon Cultural District’s Freespace is equal parts musical performance, physical theatre piece and visual installation. It curates not only a diverse set of music following the arc of the Catholic funeral mass but also a thoughtful narrative illuminating the grieving process in a space that literally opens doors – and walls – to contemplation.
Central to the experience is the 16-member Hong Kong vocal ensemble Noema, led by their founding conductor, Sanders Lau.
Although members sometimes mimic a traditional church choir – with some even holding music folders as props – their placement and pacing unfold within carefully constructed staging.
Director-choreographer Ivanhoe Lam, who turned Bach’s St John Passion into an effective theatre piece at the New Vision Arts Festival in November 2023, has a much looser choral storyline here and – without even a proscenium stage – a much bigger canvas to work with.
That visual space comes into being through an almost seamless merging of Ruby Law’s set installation, Mousey Tse’s lighting and Oliver Shing’s multimedia design.
Once the audience fills the cramped entranceway, singers first appear in the rafters, with fog and projections from above practically urging us to “go toward the light” (to highlight one well-used metaphor).
Walls of fabric soon collapse, and singers begin to appear on the ground, leading audience members into the larger space, where they can stand, sit or move at will to follow the singers as they shift in and out of various tableaux.
Within that visual frame, Lau leads his singers through a range of musical works – more than half by living composers – that remains at once thematically expansive yet constantly focused.
Opening with settings of liturgical texts (Arvo Pärt’s Da pacem Domine, Knut Nystedt’s Kyrie, Michael John Trotta’s Dies Irae), the programme then veers into a pair of motets by Poulenc and Brahms before dipping back into liturgy (Antonia Lotti’s Crucifixus a 8 voci and Lajos Bárdos’ Libera me).
From there, the music takes a notable leap into recent works reacting to those Latin sentiments in vernacular English.
Leading with Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Time does not bring relief, you have all lied”, set by Stacy Garrop, things continue with Shara Nora’s “Resolve” and David Lang’s Again (after ecclesiastes) before finally working its way into acceptance with Christopher Tin’s lush setting of Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers”.
Strung together with electroacoustic transitions by composer Chris Cheung, the sound is expertly mixed and placed throughout the space by acoustic designer Can Ha.
For their part, the fledging Noema (founded only in 2022) accomplish something not even the veteran Netherlanders attempted. Where “Van Gogh in Me” could work essentially in any medium with both music and visuals, “Garden of Repose” is a much more delicate matter.
From all corners, the creators of this production manage to rip these works from their traditional environments of the church and concert hall and engineer a meditative space where the music can thrive on its own.
“Garden of Repose – a Multimedia Choral Concert”, March 3, 4, 6-9 7.30pm, March 9-10 3pm, The Box, Freespace, West Kowloon Cultural District
