Dr. Ho performs on a Kawai GM12 in Erica Booker’s studio in Sydney.
Program:
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Selections from Préludes II
Brouillards
La puerta del Vino
Général Lavine – eccentric
Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
Rain Tree Sketch II
Read Dr. Ho’s artistic research publications here:
Ho, J. “Debussy and late-Romantic Performing Practices: The Piano Rolls of 1912” in Debussy’s Resonance, edited by François de Médicis and Steven Huebner (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2018), pp. 513-561. https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781580465250/debussys-resonance/
Ho, J. “Towards an Embodied Understanding of Performing Practices: A Gestural Analysis of Debussy’s ‘Minstrels’ According to the 1912 Piano Rolls,” La Revue Musicale OICRM, Vol. 2 (2014). https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/rmo/1900-v1-n1-rmo04275/1055845ar/abstract/
Ho, J. “Corporeal Musical Structure: A Gestural-Kinaesthetic Approach to Toru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II.” Music Theory Online, 27.4 (2021). https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.21.27.4/mto.21.27.4.ho.html
BIO
An internationally-acclaimed pianist, historical keyboardist, theorist and composer, Jocelyn Ho engages practice and scholarship in a dialogic process to challenge and enliven contemporary concert practices. Her performance interests center on the two ends of the spectrum: new music and historically informed performance practice. Her scholarship includes research in embodied cognition and gestures, and the performance practice of Haydn and Debussy.
Hailed as an artist possessing “a surprisingly unrelenting physical technique” (The Australian) and “drawing unbelievably beautiful sonorities from the piano” (2MBS Magazine), Young Steinway Artist Ho has won major piano competitions internationally such as the first prize in the 2010 Australian National Piano Award, the Kawai Award, prizes at the Bradshaw and Buono International Piano Competition, and has performed at venues around the world such as Radio France, the Sydney Opera House, Berlin’s Radialsystem V, the Melbourne Recital Centre, New York Symphony Space, Spectrum NYC, the NSW Parliament House, the Victorian Governor’s House, and the Boston Isabella Gardner Museum. Her album “Luminous Sounds,” released by Master Performers, received a five-star review in Fine Music Magazine and was featured in her interview in Limelight. She is a founding member of Sydney Piano Trio.
Ho champions new music and reinvigorates traditional music with fresh, historical perspectives. She directs inter-disciplinary, collaborative performance projects, including the sold-out music-art-tech concert project Synaesthesia Playground in which she performed works created by fifteen composers, visual artists, technologists, and fashion designers in an interactive, multimedia piano recital. Her latest project Women’s Labor that interrogates domesticity through sound installation and performance has won the International Alliance of Women in Music Ruth Anderson Award, Hellman Fellowship, Harvestwork residency, and UCLA Hugo Davise Fund for Contemporary Music, and has been featured at Governors Island, New Music Gathering, Design Museum of Chicago, ISEA, NIME, Alliance of Women in Media Arts and Technology Conference, CCRMA at Stanford, and UCLA Art|Sci Gallery.
On the other end of the spectrum, she is a historical keyboardist and is the winner of the Special Prize for the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven at the 2010 Australian National Piano Award. Her historical work on Debussy performance practice has led to a book contract with the Springer Series, and her authoritative performances of Debussy’s works is featured in her “Preludes to Paris” program toured around the world.
Ho’s compositions have been featured internationally, including in France, Germany, Australia, and the USA. Her most recent works include multi-disciplinary collaborations with software developers and visual artists featured at the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, Stony Brook Faculty Art Exhibition, and the University of Florida Art Gallery. As a performing scholar, Jocelyn Ho has published and presented papers at international conferences in the area of performance analysis, embodiment theory, Debussy studies, and mathematics and music. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts from Stony Brook University, where her teachers include Gilbert Kalish (piano) and Arthur Haas (historical keyboards). Jocelyn Ho is a Steinway Artist.