Shi-An Costello

HCL Commission2021Music composition

Apr 12

HCL Commission

Included as a part of Chicago Takes 10 | Supported by the Walder Foundation

Household Sounds of Chicago (CTT cut)

Shi-An Costello premieres Household Sounds of Chicago (CTT cut), an electro-acoustic music score blending the sounds residents across the city chose to highlight within their households during the spring of 2021. Eleven members from five multigenerational home environments created the building blocks for the music, which is played live on acoustic piano and electronics. In a very real way, Household Sounds of Chicago (CTT cut) is their response to the question of what it is like to live in Chicago in 2021.

It is also a sonic time capsule by Shi-An Costello that unexpectedly creates alternatives to the idea of the companionship music brings listeners. Hearing what the participants offered from their in-home environments opens us to the gamut of feelings we have lived in a year of living socially and physically distanced. Household Sounds of Chicago (CTT cut) suggests a way to bring us closer to one another and ourselves. This includes the dissonance and haphazard still entailed in 2021, with the open-ended laughter and slices of hope. The music’s ineffability transports us out of the routine to rally to stand in unison and confront fears and aspirations collectively.

Image: Black and white image of a kettle and pan sitting on a stove top. | Photo curtesy of the artist (Shi-An Costello)

Artist Bio

Shi-An Costello is a composer, pianist and sound artist, and a proud Asian American, born and raised in Chicago. He has released three albums, two classical solo albums, Rounded Binary and Posthumous, and most recently, an independent EP entitled water, under the artist name coshian. Other projects include [alloy] (commissioning and premiering works for prepared piano), Bach Cello Suites, Recomposed (recomposing the complete J.S. Bach Cello Suites for solo piano), and Development (a reimagination of sonata form through the works Franz Joseph Haydn, Domenico Scarlatti, and others).

Shi-An has commissioned and performed the works of living composers from around the world. He was a visiting artist to the composition department of Boston Conservatory, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and the percussion area of the Schulich School of Music (McGill University). He holds a BM from Columbia College Chicago and an MM from McGill University, under Sebastian Huydts and Dr. Sara Laimon, respectively.