Dystemporal, a portrait album on Wergo. Performances by the Talea Ensemble and Ensemble Intercontemporain.
SynchroniCities (2012) for 8 musicians with electronics
Windswept Cypresses (2005) for flute, viola, harp, percussion
Running the (Full) Gamut (2008) for piano
Centripedalocity (2008) for 7 musicians
Enjamb, Infuse, Implode (2006) for 6 musicians
Dystemporal (2012) for 23 musicians
Selected Reviews
On SynchroniCities: “The composer has been able to integrate environmental sound, expunged from any naturalistic connotation: transformed by subtle electronic processing, it becomes an extension of the instrumental timbre. The writing is not only brilliant and perfectly functional, tinted additionally by a truly mastered microtonality, it breathes and is distinguished by the gestural elegance.”
Pierre Rigaudière, Diapason (5-star review, translated from the French), Nov. 2016
“Dystemporal for 23 players (2012) presents turbulent sound textures with a bewildering simultaneity of difference, a wonderfully disturbed music. And SynchroniCities (2012) draws a rhapsodic abundance of heterogeneous thoughts, into which concrete sounds of various trips are incorporated…The field recordings from Cheung's trunks are not in the sense of “musique concrète,” cut into collage, but are either instrumentally transformed or just barely perceptible in the background. Not least, Cheung seeks out the hidden aesthetic qualities of real sounds beyond their cultural function, as acoustic artifacts. The Talea Ensemble, which Cheung himself co-founded and where he is an active pianist, performs brilliantly through the intercultural cosmos of Cheung's music.”
Dirk Wieschollek, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Vol. 177, No. 5 (4-star review, translated from the German) (2016)
Windswept Cypresses: “Cheung’s uses of passing silences—the line breaks themselves—are exquisitely effective in carving out and throwing into high relief units of musical meaning… Other works on the CD bring to mind a kind of updated Impressionism where color carries as much meaning as melody, harmony or dynamics. The three-movement Centripedalocity (2008) for seven instruments, for example, combines the timbres of chamber ensemble with jazz alto saxophone all while casting sideways glances at Debussy and Thelonious Monk; SynchroniCities (2012) uses the astringent colors of electronics and microtones to construct a paradoxically consonant clash of media and pitches. Here and elsewhere Cheung’s timbres and dynamics are often exhilarating and at many points seem to take the fractured surfaces of High Modernism and charge them with a direct, emotional urgency.”
Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News, Oct. 2016
“…uncannily perfect orchestration and a stylish melodicism that should welcome any listener. The title piece has a hint of menace and makes me think of a circus, slowed down and grown slightly threatening. Running The (Full) Gamut is a cogent piano solo (beautifully played by the composer) that is an ideal introduction to Cheung's strong sense of structure and proportion.”
Jeremy Shatan, An Earful, July 2016 (also selected as a Best of 2016 disc)