Gabrielle Martin chats with composer Njo Kong Kie. Show Notes Gabrielle and Njo Kong Kie discuss: How did your relationship with PuSh start? What was the process of presenting work at PuSh? How do you interpret and react to the source material? How did you pivot to digital work during Covid? How does the work transition back to the live stage? How has your artistic practice grown over time? About Njo Kong Kie Njo Kong Kie (composer) is a composer for dance, opera and theatre. His works include music for the play Infinity by Hannah Moscovitch, the same-sex rom-com opera knotty together (with Anna Chatterton), and the music theatre work Mr. Shi and His Lover (with Wong Teng Chi) - the first ever Chinese language production at SummerWorks, Tarragon Theatre and the National Arts Centre English Theatre. Long-serving music director of La La La Human Steps in Montreal, Kong Kie has further worked with choreographers Anne Plamondon, Aszure Barton, Shawn Hounsel and others, providing original music to their productions for companies such as Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet National de L’Opera du Rhin, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Singapore Dance Theatre and Ballet BC. His soundtrack for TV documentaries includes Fisk: Untitled Portrait and China Rises. In development: The Year of the Cello, a play with solo cello music set in Hong Kong in the 1920s (with Marjorie Chan); The Futures Market, an opera exploring the complex moral dimensions of the trade in human organs (with Douglas Rodger) and I swallowed a moon made of iron, a song cycle set to the haunting poems of Chinese poet Xu Lizhi (Canadian Stage, May 2019). Kong Kie is the artistic producer of Music Picnic. More at www.musicpicnic.com. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded in Tkaronto (Toronto), on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Tkaronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle Martin 00:02 Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and play with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. Gabrielle Martin 00:23 Today's episode features Neo -Conkey and the 2022 Push Festival. Born in Indonesia of Chinese heritage, Neo -Conkey is a Toronto -based musician and composer who creates and produces music theatre works in various forms. Gabrielle Martin 00:37 Here's my conversation with Conkey. Gabrielle Martin 00:43 I'm here with Nyo Kanki, good morning. Good morning. Yeah, and we are here in Takaranto, which is the home of many, traditional home of many First Nations, including the Mississauga of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee. Gabrielle Martin 01:00 And today is also the home of many other nations, including the Inuit and the Métis. And we're also at the Theatre Centre on the garden patio. Njo Kong Kie 01:11 yes wonderful yes my my neighborhood theaters well center of theaters i guess and also a favorite cafe in the neighborhood yeah so we are here in the rooftop of the theater center Gabrielle Martin 01:23 Yeah, thanks for recommending this place. And we'll talk about this neighborhood a bit more in a moment because it's your home where you've shot the digital version for the 2021 presentation of I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron. Gabrielle Martin 01:36 So that's the project that was presented by Nyo at Push. But I just want to rewind a little bit and talk about how your relationship with Push began. Can you take us to the next thing? Njo Kong Kie 01:48 Um, I'm like, yeah, I've, I've known about the push festival, of course, sometimes like before I even started creating work, you know, and, um, just, and I've met Norman a number of times through, um, at receptions or, you know, performing, uh, performing arts platform and arts market, those sort of situations that I've kind of always known about the festival. Njo Kong Kie 02:11 And I've been to Vancouver with a lot of human stuffs quite a few times in the past, uh, as, as performer, uh, or musicians. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just to distinguish, I'm not quite a dancer, not at that level anyhow. Njo Kong Kie 02:24 And yeah. Uh, and so, so I think our paths, I, yeah, I've crossed paths with Norman quite a few times and yeah. But, uh, and, uh, when I first started sort of making work, of course, that ...
