East Kowloon Cultural Centre Theatre｜East Kowloon Cultural Centre Venue Partnership Scheme: "Saan Yaam" by Jazz Society

Description

"Like wind, far away, but with a depth like a rumbling of the earth."
—Yasunari Kawabata

The wind has its voice; the trees, the streams and the birds too—but what of the mountain?
When we gaze upon Hong Kong’s undulating peaks, a profound hum seems to emanate from deep within the earth. Is it the tremor of tectonic plates shifting? The cadence of wind carving its way through rocky crevices? Or the awakening frequencies of millennia-old sedimentary layers, stirring with forgotten memories?

Saan Yaam (in Cantonese, the sound of the mountain) brings together music director Alan Kwan, new media artist Henry Chu, and jazz saxophonist Scott Murphy in a cross-disciplinary exploration of Hong Kong’s mountainous essence.

Chu’s kinetic installation gives shape to the mountain’s tangible contours and traces the invisible paths of the wind. Kwan and Murphy’s original jazz compositions, inspired by Kowloon’s Eight Mountains, intertwine to form a virtual soundscape—an "artificial canyon" where music and visuals merge.

Here, the hum of metallic kinetic engines, seismic basslines echoing the heartbeat of bedrock, and the mountain’s imagined voice converge into a sensory journey, inviting us to contemplate - as we seek to hear the voice of the mountain, are we truly listening to the whispers of the earth—or are we hearing the echoes of our own longing?