SEAMS
Nexus Arts · Adelaide · 2026
A three-day collaborative performance project for erhu, double bass, voice and electronics, exploring improvisation as a shared language across musical traditions.
David Wei-Han Dai — erhu / electronics
Helen Svoboda — double bass / voice / synthesizer
12–14 August 2026
Invited and presented by Nexus Arts
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Seams began with two musicians meeting for the first time.
Helen Svoboda and I arrived with different instruments, musical histories and approaches to performance. Rather than beginning with predetermined repertoire, we began by listening.
Across three intensive days, we explored how erhu, double bass, voice and electronics could meet through improvisation, composition and live experimentation.
The erhu and double bass come from very different traditions, yet both share an intimate relationship with gesture, resonance and the human voice. This became the starting point for a collaboration that moved between structure and spontaneity, acoustic and electronic sound, melody and abstraction.
The project was not about blending two traditions until their differences disappeared.
Instead, we became interested in the points where those differences could meet, overlap and remain visible.
The seams became the music.
PROCESS
Over three days at Nexus Arts, we worked together for approximately seven hours each day.
We improvised, listened back, discussed what had emerged, isolated musical ideas and gradually shaped them into five new works.
Some pieces began with existing material from our individual practices. Others grew from an imagined image, a melodic fragment or a spontaneous gesture discovered in the room.
On the second day, the process opened to the public through an artist talk, where we shared our instruments, approaches to improvisation and the developing language of the collaboration.
Electronics became an important part of my own exploration. Through reverb, delay, looping, octave processing and distortion, the erhu could move between its direct acoustic voice and larger fields of texture, resonance and noise.
For me, this opened new possibilities for the instrument without removing its cultural or sonic identity.
FIVE WORKS
ANGRY TREE
Beginning with an imagined image of a tree, Angry Tree moves from clarity towards disturbance.
High erhu lines and vocal textures suggest growth and openness before the sound world gradually becomes denser and more unstable. Friction, collision and dissonance accumulate, transforming the music into a reflection on environmental damage and human indifference.
DESTINY · MEMORY
Developed from material from one of my earlier works, Destiny · Memory begins with erhu and double bass improvising around a D-based gong mode.
Fragments gradually connect into melody before shifting into a more rhythmic second section. The work explores memory as something that is not reproduced exactly, but reshaped each time it return.
VOID OF SPACE
Developed in dialogue with Helen’s existing work of the same name, Void of Space places voice, erhu and electronics inside a more abstract sonic environment.
Effects move between voice and instrument while short erhu gestures appear like flashes across a larger field of sound. The work gradually loses stability and ends through increasing density and dissonance rather than resolution.
HIGH MOUNTAIN
Built from my own musical material, High Mountain begins with erhu and synthesizer creating an imagined open landscape.
Voice enters through improvisation before erhu and double bass introduce a shared melodic idea. The work moves between written material and extended improvisation, allowing each instrument to lead, respond and redirect the other.
SPRING · SUMMER
Spring · Summer grew from a melody we discovered together on the first day.
Its opening imagines spring through small, independent gestures from erhu, double bass and voice. Two related melodic lines gradually move closer until they arrive together in a warmer and fuller musical space.
The piece ends with both instruments returning to a clear upper register, moving from individual perspectives towards shared direction.
PERFORMANCE
The collaboration culminated in a 50-minute performance at Nexus Arts on 14 August 2026, presenting all five works created during the three-day development.
Although each piece developed a recognisable structure, improvisation remained central to the performance.
Melodies could shift, pauses could expand, electronics could reshape the acoustic balance, and either performer could redirect the music in real time.
The performance was therefore not simply the presentation of finished compositions.
It remained an active conversation.
REFLECTION
Seams deepened my interest in collaboration as a form of listening.
I discovered that cross-cultural work does not require different musical identities to be blended into a single style. A shared language can also emerge by allowing difference to remain audible.
The erhu did not need to stop sounding like an erhu in order to enter Helen’s musical world.
Instead, connection emerged through gesture, resonance, melody, texture, improvisation and attention.
The project also expanded my relationship with electronics, allowing me to hear the erhu not only as a traditional melodic instrument, but as a flexible contemporary sound source.
For me, Seams became less about cultural fusion and more about cultural conversation.
It continues to shape how I approach improvisation, collaboration and the possibilities of the erhu in contemporary performance.
WATCH
SEAMS — Performance Highlights, Nexus Arts · Adelaide · 14 August 2026
CREDITS
Erhu & Electronics — David Wei-Han Dai
Double Bass, Voice & Synthesizer — Helen Svoboda
Creative Development & Performance — David Wei-Han Dai & Helen Svoboda
Invited & Presented by — Nexus Arts
PRESENTATION & COLLABORATION
The expanded version of Yield Strength is currently in development.
I welcome conversations with festivals, galleries, presenters, curators and interdisciplinary artists interested in presenting, commissioning or further developing the work.
