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Tongue-Twister Competition was composed for Ensemble InterContemporain in 2016 for a concert during the Manifeste Academy 2016 at IRCAM in France.
This piece explores a gaming approach by which the structure of the piece emerges dynamically the figure of the composition depending on how performers interpret the suggested musical elements. While most musical pieces are fixed on a score, this piece enables to generate the variety of its figure depending on the winning-losing process between the instrumentalists. Tempi and a combination of instruments are decided in real time as a result of the gaming process in which the instrumentalists have to compete each other. This realtime generative process causes a differences between this piece and the conventional notated pieces: while the conventional notated compositions are designed to be reproduced as a composer wondered, this piece reflects, as well as the composer’s will, performer’s characteristics, which remark liveness of “now here”.

This piece was inspired by Tongue Twister - a game, in which players try to pronounce a verbal phrase, which is designed to be difficult to articulate properly, as fast as possible. In this piece, all instruments except a percussion and a double bass are regarded as participants of the musical version of Tongue Twister game, which requires them to compete each other to play a musical phrase as fast as possible.
The game consists of numerous rounds of competitive parts and fixed parts, which appear alternately during the course of the piece. In the competitive parts, each participant is required to play a phrase as fast as possible at same time. As a result, one loser - an instrumentalist playing the slowest - is decided in every round. This loser loses his/her eligibility to participate in the competitive parts, is kicked out from the stage to an audience area, where the loser is allowed to play only the fixed parts. The rest of the participants are the winner in this round, and will be required to compete each other in the following competitive parts.