Last Wednesday, Adilia Yip presented her doctoral research in the rather full White Hall. Her PhD project was called "Inventing New Marimba Performance from the African Balafon Music Practice". The percussionist and marimbist examined the West African sounds and musical traditions of the balafon. A balafon is an ethnic xylophone that is considered the forerunner of the marimba, with gourds hung under the wooden slats.
She traveled to Mali and Burkina Faso, where she learned to play the balafon and then tried to translate the balafon music into her own instrument. Inspired by the complex polyrhythm of the balafon, advanced coordination techniques and a different learning approach, this intercultural experience broadened Adilia's views on music and life. It gave her valuable artistic insights to enrich her original marimba performance skills.
Finally she invited (classical) composers to write pieces for the marimba, using West-African influences. The result is a new and exotic addition to the marimba music repertoire.
During her doctoral defense, Adilia presented "In the Heat of the Moment", a concert program with pieces by five contemporary composers written exclusively for this research project, alongside her promoters Henk De Smaele (University of Antwerp, ARIA) and Kathleen Coessens (Royal Conservatire Antwerp , Royal Conservatoire Brussels) also Bart Quartier (Royal Conservatoire Brussels), Valerie Naranjo (New York University, Steinhardt), Wim Henderickx (Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, Amsterdam University of the Arts) and chairman Bart Eeckhout (University of Antwerp).
The jury praised the perseverance of Adilia Yip and her knowledge of the balafon. The presentation, with a lot of audio-visual material, was also considered very valuable, as was the new repertoire that she had commissioned. Compliments were also for the composers, who had translated the sound of the balafon into the marimba in an interesting way. With loud applause, Adilia Yip became the eighth Doctor in the Arts at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp.
Adilia Yip was born in Hong Kong and is a marimbist / percussionist and artistic researcher based in Belgium. She obtained a Master in percussion at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp and a Master in chamber music at the Lemmensinstituut Leuven. She is a fellow of the docARTES program of the Orpheus Institute in Ghent.