Our Work · Music
Contemporary Composers @ Bush Lab
Supporting female contemporary composers.
Music is a part of Uganda
A jerrycan turns into a drum, and people start moving the moment they listen to music. With the Bush Lab, Toonda wants to connect local and international artists, mixing traditional music and contemporary, experimental music from abroad in our rural village.
Female composers can stay in our grass-thatched-roof house, using the stage for lectures, workshops and performances.
Dr Yijie Wang- @Bush Lab 2022
Yijie Wang had piano lessons with her father from the age of five. From 2002 she studied composition with Prof. Wanchun Shi at the Chinese Conservatory in Beijing, and from October 2007 with Prof. Peter Michael Hamel at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. She completed her doctorate as a composer and musicologist in June 2016, summa cum laude.
Her music theatre work “Chang’e’s Journey to the Moon” was performed at the Laeiszhalle Hamburg with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra under Muhai Tang in 2012. Her opera “Yang Guifei – The Emperor’s Concubine” premiered in Hamburg and at the Schauspielhaus Kiel in 2014. Later commissions include “Jin Mu Huo – Emulsion”, “关陰 (guan ju)”, the dance theatre piece “Moment”, “Der kleine Mensch”, “Filetstücke”, “The Eight Trigrams” and String Quartet No. 1 at the Elbphilharmonie.
She has taught music theory and ear training at the International College of Music in Hamburg since October 2011.
Listen and read: yijiewang.de
Macri Cáceres @Bush Lab 2021
Due to the pandemic, Macri had to stay in Peru. We held a virtual workshop with her in December 2021 instead, and hope to welcome her another time in person.
She is a composer of mixed and electronic music, a performer, improviser, builder of ceramic flutes, and a creator of sound spaces and poetry. She produces and curates the Virtual Meeting of Female Latin American Composers, is a founding member of the non-profit Musuq, part of RETAMA – the first group of Peruvian composers – and a member of RedcLa, the Network of Latin American Female Composers.
Born in Lima, she studied music and composition at the Peruvian University of Applied Sciences and took the diploma in sound creation with new technologies at CMMAS, the Mexican Center for Music and Sound Arts, in 2019. Her research into the sonic possibilities of ceramic flutes runs from harmonic exploration during construction through to composition and collaboration across disciplines.
Listen and read: SoundCloud · macricaceres.com
Compose at the Bush Lab
Female composers are welcome to stay, work and perform in Kyakataama. Email info@toonda.org to talk about a residency.