Music at Noon with Elaine Lau and Joseph Ferretti, Oct. 5th, 2023

Program Notes

The two piano versions of Vincent Ho’s Supervillain Études, as well as “Coda - Asy7um,” were premiered in October, 2022 as a result of a commission by pianists Lana Henchell and Akiko Tominaga. The preface to Vincent Ho’s published score gives context for the original solo études, which were the basis for the piano duo versions: “Vincent Ho’s Supervillain Études, for solo piano, are inspired by six supervillains from comic book culture that he grew up reading about and watching on television and film. While researching these characters, ahead of writing the music, Ho created psychological profiles for them and found that each villain was an extreme expression of psychological disorders. Ho then collaborated with choreographers to see their interpretation of animating each of the profiles in dance form, and those physical movements were then reimagined as gestures on the piano. Ho’s writing in these études is heavily informed by his own playing style – how his hands naturally find their way around the piano. The composer writes: ‘While moving into a new home, I was delighted to discover a box of old comic books from my childhood and spent the summer re-reading them. It was during this time that I came up with the idea of writing piano études inspired by six of the villains. As most of these villains were judged to be criminally insane and placed in an asylum, not a prison, it suggests that have some type of psychological disorder. With the help of my wife Tracy, a psychologist, I created psychological profiles of each character to better understand their traits and disorders, such as having OCD, narcissism, and ASD. I then gave these profiles to three choreographers and asked them how they would interpret each character’s gestural and physical languages/motions. Based on their interpretations, which I video recorded, I consulted with pianists on how to recreate these into pianistic form, hence “études”: works designed to develop particular techniques. ‘” (Woods, Ben, “Supervillain Études, Volume 1 (2021),” in Supervillain Études Volume I for piano, comp. Vincent Ho [Wellington, New Zealand, Promethean Editions Ltd. 2021], v-vi.)

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