Biography

Kezia Yap is an Australian, Tokyo-based composer who specialises in acoustic chamber, and mixed music, a medium combining live acoustic instrumental performance with electronic elements. Her music has been described as “full of unexpected light,” as it aims to combine a sense of energy and organic interaction between the sound, space, performers and audience. Her work centres around an exploration of timbre and space, and the way these elements can be extended through the inclusion of electronics.

In recent years, she has been commissioned by various ensembles and performers including Petrichor Sax, Leichhardt Espresso Chorus, Dan Thorpe and Richard Narroway, and taken part in New Music festivals and residencies around the world including Connecticut Summerfest, and ATM in Seoul in 2017, and more recently, the Madeira Residency and June in Buffalo in 2018. Her music has been premiered and performed around Australia, as well as around the US, Europe and Asia, broadcasted on ABC Classic FM, Fine Music 102.5, and she has been a featured composer on the Making Waves new music playlist.

Composer website:  http://www.keziayap.com

Featured Works

Orbit, for vibraphone and tape.

Orbit is a piece that explores the interaction between a live performer and electronics. It melds the sound of vibraphone, creating a metallic sound world which extends the sounds of the vibraphone and pushes its timbre to the limits. The tape is constructed exclusively from vibraphone samples, distorting its vibrant and bright sound and at times, inducing a much darker tone.

Featured in Playlist 10 – Existential Waves (31/10/2015)

Tracings, for flute and electronics.

Featured in Solo Waves – April 2016 (1/04/2016).

a structure of silences: an exploration of 間, for alto flute.

a structure of silences: an exploration of 間 (mā), written for alto flute and optional electronics explores a concept that I first discovered in a short essay by Tōru Takemitsu called One Sound, in which he says:

Just one such sound can be complete in itself, for its complexity lies in the formulation of ma, an unquantifiable metaphysical space (duration) of dynamically tensed absence of sound.

This piece explores how silence and space can influence the performance and experience of this piece. Where there is silence, the work absorbs the sounds of the environment. There- fore, this piece will always change from performance to performance, depending on the performer and their environment; and this has a flow-on effect onto the listener. a structure of silences was originally written for, and premiered by Keiko Murakami at the Madeira Residency in January 2018. This particular recording was taken outdoors, outside the Capella São Sebastião in Ponta do Sol, so the sounds of the town have become a part of this sonic manifestation of the piece.

Featured in Stillness Waves, September 2018

coalesce, for cello, vibraphone and electronics.

Coalesce has brought together two of the things that interest me the most in music at the moment: colours created through textures, and combining acoustics instruments with electronically produced sounds. It explores a world of shifting textures that manifest through the blending and transformation of sounds and through the combination of vibraphone, cello and electronics, with an underlying familiarity of varying sounds derived from unvaried sound sources. Beginning as spacious layers that blends in and out of each other, layers fragment, then disintegrate becoming granular, distorted and seemingly more dense. While throughout the year, this piece has taken many shapes and forms, it has settled as a the piece it is today, following an evolving textural idea that gradually transforms into an altered version of itself.

Featured in Waves of Consciousness (February 2019)