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Breathing–for cello, electronics and video (2018)

Breathing is so essential is our lives; sometimes we take it for granted, and never perceive and appreciate it. It means the aliveness of our body, the pace of our mind, and even the freedom of being able to be alive and be active.

The composer tries to create a meditative musical space for the audience to experience their own breathing, with the timbre varies between the original cello sounds and the synthesized sounds in the electronic music, people will perceive their own pace through intensive sounds and relaxing sounds. All the images develop to abstract phantoms following the development of the sounds.”

Qi Mengjie (Maggie) is a composer and multimedia sound artist. Her electronic music and installation works have been performed widely at international festivals, including ICMC, Audio Arts Festival, WOCMAT in Taiwan, CIME concerts, International Electronic Music Festival of New York, SEAMUS, ISCM, NYCEMF, SPLICE Festival, Cube Fest, SICPP and MUSICACOUSTICA-BEIJING. Her works have won awards on noted competitions, such as prizes on MUSICACOUSTICA and the Competition of Oskar Kolberg.

Qi is a post doctoral research fellow at the Central Conservatory of Music and her research is about AI music. She also works at China Academy of Art as guest lecturer for interdisciplinary media research and teaching. She also serves as At-large director of International Computer Music Association since 2021.

She studied at City University of New York in the United States under the supervision of Professor Douglas Geers and Professor Morton Subotnick. She is one of the associate editors of Intelligent Arts. She has been working as the international coordinator of MUSICACOUSTICA-BEIJING festival since 2012. As a curator and founder of the Ensemble Phoenix Beijing, she devotes to the international cultural exchange and the integration of multi-genre performance.