ICMC BOSTON 2025
Online Listening Room
Curiosity, Play, Innovation - A 50th Anniversary Celebration of Creativity in Music, Science, and Technology
June 8-14, 2025
ICMC BOSTON 2025: Online Listening Room #1
ID#: 758
Bathing the Buddha (2024) ; 10:25
by Han Xu
Peking University, Cornell University
Inspired by the solemn Buddhist rituals observed during the Bathing the Buddha ceremony—where devotees gaze upon, bathe, and prostrate before the gilded statue of Sakyamuni—this work contemplates the essence of śūnyatā: all phenomena are empty of inherent existence, neither born nor destroyed, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing. Like the Buddha, who transcends physical form and statue, the true nature remains untainted yet not “clean.” The composition takes the unwanted audio signal—clipping and distortion, typically avoided in digital sound processing—as its primary material. Through the transformation and development of these sonic objects, the piece gradually reveals an aesthetic of noise, shaping the overall flow and texture of sound. The artist boldly employs the raw audio clips of intermittent clipping artifacts captured between chants in temple recordings, using these two fundamental sonic elements to construct the entire work. Within the vast cosmic spectacle of background signals, noise is the fundamental state. Music emerges as a shifting interplay between the primordial noise of the universe (background noise) and the manipulated signals desired by human perception (foreground noise). The formless Buddha bathes in this immense noise, neither defiled nor pure.
Han Xu
Xu Han 许瀚 ( Beijing China) is a composer, scholar, sound artist, trombone &euphonium player, instrument hacker, coder, and improviser who draws inspiration from Buddhist Philosophy and hands-on aesthetics. Han is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Peking University (School of Arts). Han holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from Cornell University and finished a music master’s degree in composition (graduating with distinction) from the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester, the UK. Han studies with Adam Gorb, Benjamin D. Piekut, Marianthi Papaleandri-Alexandri, Kevin Ernste, Trevor J. Pinch, Blake Stevens, Kenneth Fields, Emily Howard, and Roberto Sierra. Han’s works have been performed by London Symphony Orchestra (UK), BBC Singers(UK), Wet Ink Ensemble(USA), Israeli Chamber Project(Israel), Composers Conference Ensemble(USA) with Conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni, Red Desert Ensemble(USA), Yarn/Wire(USA), Greg Stuart(USA), KOE DUO(USA), NOMON(USA), Manchester Camerata(UK),19 SoundLab(China), Tacet(i) Ensemble(Thailand), Cornell Festival Chamber Orchestra(USA), and RNCM Symphony Orchestra(UK). Han has been supported by scholarships and funding from Peking University BoYa post-doc Fellowship, Sage Fellowship of Graduate School at Cornell University(USA), Otto R. Stahl Memorial Award(USA), Darmstadt Summer Course(Germany), Composers Conference – Fromm Foundation Composition Fellowship (USA), British Council(UK), LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme(UK), Cornell Council for the Arts(USA), RNCM School of Composition(UK), RNCM School of Wind, Brass and Percussion(UK), Peking University Resources（Holdings）Company Limited（China), and was also the recipient of the British Composer Arnold Cooke Award(UK), and London Symphony Orchestra Bursary(UK).
* winner, Berklee College of Music internal music composition competition for ICMC Boston 2025
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