.png)
Jasmine Lai
Consciousness 2.0
I am a young pianist, percussionist and composer. I am studying piano from Glenn Riddle, percussion from Sergei Golovko and composition from Tony Gould. I love interpreting music using either piano or marimba as there are a lot of different possibilities to perform the music. As a composer, I get a lot of inspirations from different composers through understanding the different genre of music. In terms of my music achievement, I was awarded AMUSA (Piano) in 2019 and was winners of MSV Piano Competition (12 years and under in 2016 and 15 years and under in 2020), a winner of Australian Marimba Competition (Australian and New Zealand Student section in 2019) and was one of winners in Artology Fanfare Composer Competition 2019.
The reason why I name my piece ‘Consciousness 2.0’ is because it depicts a picture of how people rise and fall in life. An example of this is what happened during the Australian bushfires, which was a time when people were very aware of what was happening.
Consciousness means to be aware and responsive to the surroundings, and it can also mean a person’s perspective of events.
My piece begins with a soft introduction, which describes the life of Australia and its unique environment. From the bustling cities to the open country, there is always some life around Australia. Sometimes there is also some wild weather, which is represented in the arpeggiated left hand (bars 10-14).
The story then shifts its focus to the animals, through short 2-part phrase in bars 23-26. The animals are enjoying their time in nature. The phrase is in Aeolian mode, so there is a bit of mystery instead of having an obvious key. Then, the parallel fifths depict the openness and vastness of the land.
The transition is shown in bars 32-34 by a smooth 4-part phrase going downwards.
The next fast section (bars 35-47) describes the rise of panic, just like a howling heat of the bushfire. The chromatic 7th chords (bars 36,38) make a sense of tension, and after 3 times, the chromaticism makes its way to a recent memory of the rushing semiquavers (bars 43-44) After the bushfires came closer, animals panicked as they rushed and left their precious homes. It was devastating to see how many people were affected, with houses destroyed, people and animals burning into the ashes (bars 48-54).
Then there is another new section (bars 55-68) which describes the uncertainty, for example, the right-hand quavers describe a flashback of nature planning itself to create a bushfire, or the times when people were planning a solution to this incident.
The uncertainty was unfolded when the fast right hand semiquavers come back, (bars 69-82) creating a whoosh of destruction disappointment and adjustment.
The last part is the ending of story (bars 84 to end). Though the fire has made a lot of destruction, with Aussie spirit, there is always hope that everyone can rebuild a new and better community in the future.
By Jasmine Lai