Global STRATEGIST for a new musical project in development

This one-minute video includes three research elements:

1. graphic notation sketches

2. folded paper scores

3. being in the forest

Byron Au Yong develops Forest Aeternam with musical offerings for people to gather in the places they call home. These include woodland areas and virtually with trees on digital devices. This project—where people listen and sing with trees—is currently in development with support from the Bloedel Reserve, McKnight Foundation, Music to Life, and other individuals and organizations.

Forest Aeternam is in development with three overlapping ecological approaches:

1. Connections with Nature
   Socially distanced in-person and virtual events to listen and sing with trees as a contemplative musical practice to review our awareness of the environment and imagine a healthy future.

2. Connections with Ancestors
   Forest Aeternam expands music notation with sculpture scores as an adaptive reuse of paper to connect my Chinese heritage with my training in European classical music.

3. Connections with Institutions
   This initiative uplifts the natural world with participatory musical events and installations of photographs, sculptures, and videos for cathedrals, concert halls, museums, and other urban venues to provide access for multiple audiences.

Grounded in Byron’s expertise as a composer dedicated to civic participation, Forest Aeternam incorporates an expansive collection of multimodal musical practices. Your participation and support provides crucial time, space, and partnerships to develop and actualize ceremonial, environmental, sonic, and visual components of this multifaceted project. Isolation, live-stream funerals, and shape-shifting pandemics have transformed individual and collective relationships with death. Forest Aeternam overcomes the fear and sorrow caused by global warming by expanding the musical mass to connect communities with ways to imagine and adapt.