“The Colours of Thailand” – a performance of two newly composed music for saxophone ensemble to be performed by Sax12 from Bangkok, Thailand.

Two world premieres from Anothai Nitibhon and Vanich Potavanich, who interpret Thai tradition and culture through their own experiences, resulting a music that represents modern Thai era.

Biography

Founded in 2000, Sax12 by C.U. Saxophone Ensemble is a collaboration of classical saxophonists from renowned music institutes in Thailand which aims to promote and disseminate classical saxophone tradition as well as finding new possible ways to communicate with Thai society. In search of a perfect ensemble, the band has gone through a radical change in terms of instrumental combinations and numbers. Currently, the ensemble includes 2 Sopranos, 4 Altos, 3 Tenors, 2 Baritones and 1 Bass Saxophone. Regularly performing at Chulalongkorn University, Sax12’s repertoires contain music of all genres, from transcription of classical favourites to new commissioned pieces by Thai composers. During the past years, the ensemble has been invited to performs and to give lectures in Thailand and oversea.

More information

“The Colour of Thailand” project is a saxophone ensemble recital with short introduction between each pieces by Sax12. The performance will include two newly composed music from Thai prominent composers, Anothai Nitibhon and Vanich Potavanich.

Composer / Pianist / Artist , Anothai obtain her PhD in Composition from University of Edinburgh in May 2007.

Working on a cultural frontier, Anothai bases her musical research on the idea of intercultural and dialogues between cultures, integrating musical languages of a professionally trained, contemporary-style to the folk-base oral tradition and combining together various types of performers including professional musicians, folk-musicians, children and people with no musical background. Her compositions has been performed by the orchestras and ensembles in many countries. She was also invited to be a jury for the 1st and the 2nd Goethe Institut’s Composition Competition for Young Composers in South East Asia.

Alongside her works in composition, Anothai intensively involves in the music community projects and curate many sound installation projects working with artists, architects and designers. Her recent works now involves collaborative works with Dr. Jean- David Caillouët in the multidisciplinary art projects including sound installation at The Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 and a audio-visual installation ‘Loi Krathong’ for the Goethe institut’s exhibition ‘Riverscape in Flux’ 2012 Hanoi, Vietnam.

Anothai is now a Vice President of Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music, and still work on many creative projects integrating music making and other art forms.

For this commission, sound and visual will be combined in order to let audience have full experienced with Thai fragrance.

The performance will conclude by composition of Vanich Potavanich, former principal trumpet of Bangkok Symphony Orchestra from 1986 to 2004. Vanich is now known as an accomplished conductor, composer and arranger who has at least 200 arrangements under his name. As a conductor, he is a resident conductor of Rangsit University Symphony Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra of Thailand, orchestras where he creates creative programming that aim to expose classical music to Thai audience. As a composer, his works have been performed by orchestras both in Thailand and abroad. Most of his works are inspired by historical story in Thailand where he tries to integrate Thai traditional music into Western harmony, hence creating a new sound to his works. His notable compositions are Deep impression, Rajadamnern, King of Peace to name just a few. In 2014, Vanich was named as Thai Silpathorn Artist in the field of music, an award that given to an accomplished Thai artist age between 30 – 50 whose continuous creative works has been acknowledge both nationally and internationally.

Vanich will harmonize Western and Thai cultures in his new composition for Sax12 which will bring audience into world of historical Thai.