Composers’ Fund Grantee: Alex Ho
Ye Xian: A Story Untold
After an intensely wholesome first phase of development, director and choreographer Julia Cheng and composer Alex Ho are delighted to be expanding their (anti-)opera, ‘Untold’. The new production will be produced by Belgian-based Muziektheater Transparant with support from Britten-Pears Foundation for multiple performances around Europe in 2023. Combining movement and music for Chinese and western instruments, ‘Untold’ centres transnational experience and casts a critical lens on received opera traditions whilst shedding light on the richness and multiplicity of cross-cultural spaces.
Described as “a rich tapestry” and “a collaborative tale of pride and grace” (Schmopera), the 2019 first version was performed by Julia Cheng, Keith Pun, and Tangram with support from Sound and Music, Arts Council England, Britten-Pears Foundation and Help Musicians UK and won the George Butterworth Award for “an outstanding new work”.
Alex Ho is a British-Chinese composer based in London. Currently Artist-in-Residence with Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier, he has had pieces performed/commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, BBC Radio 3, Royal Opera House, National Opera Studio, Music Theatre Wales, and London Sinfonietta. Alex was winner of the Arthur Bliss Prize 2017, one of Sound and Music’s ‘New Voices 2018’, an LSO Soundhub Composer 2018-2020, and shortlisted for a Scottish New Music Award 2021. He is co-director of Tangram, a collective of composers and performers of Chinese and western instruments, and is completing a doctorate at Royal College of Music with a full AHRC scholarship (LAHP studentship supported by RCM).