VASCAM Talk Art Series 2021

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Music composition

August 24, 2021

Aaken (aka Tôn Thất An) is a Parisian born Vietnamese composer whose field of action spans music for contemporary dance, theatre plays, film score, songs as well as orchestral and instrumental works.

He has composed extensively for Japanese choreographer Jo Kanamori and his company Noism, their first collaboration NINA – materialise sacrifice (2005) toured around the world, PLAY 2 PLAY was awarded best dance work in Japan in 2007, while Les Contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) (2010) blended dance, video, opera and bunraku puppet theatre. He has also collaborated with Régine Chopinot and Jean Paul Gaultier on W.h.a. (2003) and with Taiwanese dance wunderkind Huang Yi on Symphony Project (2010), Double Yellow Line (2012), Shadows of Sound (2013), which was premiered at the Ailey CityGroup Theater in New York, and Floating Domain (2014), a piece created for CloudGate 2.

A singer-songwriter, he has made three studio albums: Circlesong (2005) and Hyperbody (2010), and We Were (t)here (2017), as well as Fukaeri, a collaborative project with Portuguese songstress Bévinda. He also co-wrote and arranged songs for Forgotten West, an album by Taiwanese singer Sam Liao (2018), which garnered him the ‘Best Arranger’ awards at the 2019 Taiwan Golden Melody and a ‘Best Album in Taiwanese’ for Sam Liao.

Settled in Taipei since 2010, he continues to develop his activities in various creative fields.

Learn and listen more on his website.