The Ninth Tone is the latest offering from Speak Percussion, an established Melbourne-based “internationally recognised leader in the fields of experimental and contemporary classical music”. Presented on Sunday, December 1, 2024, at the Museum of Chinese Australian History, the hour-long performance was conceived and composed by Jasmin Wing Yin Leung. This work uses a non-traditional approach to music to explore the 200-year history of Chinese music in Australia. It is a “speculation” and invites a questioning of past, present and future.

Whilst devised through thorough research of performances and practices of Chinese music in Australia, it is not necessary for the listener to have a previous interest in this. What is more important is the ability to sit with the unknown and be curious, similar to the openness needed when viewing modern abstract art.

You will not hear traditional melodies, only a tiny fragment, and the instruments are not used traditionally but adapted to sometimes non-musical details extracted from historical research. For example, the guzheng, usually plucked, is bowed for most of the performance, and its strings are de-tuned to match the dimensions of a tent that was used for Cantonese opera performances in Clinkers Hill, Castlemaine, in the 1850s.

I found the whole experience mesmerising as soon as I entered the performance space, which was dimly lit by a few round red paper lanterns. Set in the round, the variety of instruments on display whet the appetite visually – two sizes of guzheng for Mindy Meng Wang; a woodblock and a collection of small gongs and snares for Kaylie Melville; an erhu, yehu and laptop for Leung the composer; a laptop, a number of transistor radios, a vintage gramophone and an old record player (complete with 78rpm records in shellac and vinyl) for Sally Ann McIntyre who was also a key artistic collaborator.

I had a peek at the scores which were indecipherable to me – no usual 5-line staves or notes, just long horizontal lines divided by small circles, some 3 digit numbers (radio frequencies?), curved lines and performer names at their cues.

From silence, the performance opens with McIntyre setting up a pad of static hiss generated by the gradual activation of each transistor radio and record players. These are recorded and amplified through a microphone wired to the performer’s wrist. The sounds are manipulated through a laptop using Ableton’s looping capabilities. A pre-recorded faint 3 note melodic motif is heard and repeats sparsely, but the soundscape is dominated by layers of static. This fragment is later developed into a duet with the live erhu player, Leung, but for now, it remains a faint bell-like relief from the static.

The texture builds with the addition of sustained bowed notes from the guzheng and yehu (or erhu, I am not sure) and even a bowed gong. I am reminded of some filmic mood music and remain tantalised by the gradual addition of layers of sound and watch closely at all players to see if I can work out its origin – electronic or acoustic, looped from a previous recording or from the current sonic offerings generated in the here and now.

Kaylie Melville, co-director of Speak Percussion, provides the backbone of the highest point of the work with an intense, insistent drum roll on the woodblock, which breaks the dominance of tonal drones and static pads. Different percussive timbres are explored, but eventually, the long tones re-emerge, and the even patter of the woodblock subsides into yet another sustain.

Kudos should be given to Rohan Goldsmith’s sound engineering for sound clarity in the performance space. Also, Giovanna Yate Gonzalez’s very effective lighting design underlined the mood changes between sections.

The performance was effectively closed in a mirror of its opening, with a gradual dimming of light and sound, the thinning of texture, and finally the switching off, one by one of the transistor radios until there was silence and darkness.

I enjoyed this performance of The Ninth Tone: Speculations of Chinese Australian Sonic History (produced by Chelsea Byrne for Speak Percussion). You don’t have to have any prior knowledge of Chinese music or history to appreciate this experimental work, which explores an approach to history’s offerings, recorded and imagined, and its effect on the present and future. But you do have to suspend any expectation of traditional music and join in the “speculation”.

Look for future performances of this exciting work and other works by Speak Percussion on their website, https://www.speakpercussion.com.

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.