Farewell Dwelling

Duration:

10'

Farewell Dwelling (2022) is a piece for flute, percussion, yangqin, and piano composed by Tonia Ko and premiered by Daniel Shao, Beibei Wang, Reylon Yount, and Annie Yim, and conducted by Alex Ho on 29 January 2022 at LSO St. Luke's.  

Farewell Dwelling reflects on cycles of care within a family— the reciprocation of parental care in a Confucian sense, and what happens when several people take turns caring for someone, as is the current situation of my maternal grandmother and her nine children. Thus I imagine my grandmother constantly saying a small ‘goodbye’ to her current home as she prepares to stay with a different member of the family for a few days.  

The diminishing of one’s physical vitality is inevitable, but these cycles of care continue the vibrancy of our family albeit within quieter, more intimate settings. These ideas manifest in the music in several ways: formally, with spiralling, repeating phrases, registrally, with high pitches gradually settling into lows, and timbrally, with sounds that go from bright to muted.