The composition (one)[year](later) for Chinese instruments is a product of my nearly two-year-long collaboration with the Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra of Beijing.
I must admit that learning the secrets of the traditional instruments and familiarising myself with their sound was a painstaking process: hours of improvisation, touching and testing the instruments, sound recording, searching for their musical identity—often without satisfying results.
During my first visit to Beijing, I developed an intense fascination for the poetry of Ai Weiwei. I began to learn his philosophy and his strategy of artistic work. I came across a text he wrote after his release from prison, where he had been detained without a proper trial, allegedly for “tax fraud.” In that text, he asks a question that in a sense became the starting point for my piece: “If you don’t know how you lost something, how can you protect it?” Our days pass by; life sometimes falls to such small pieces that there is nothing left to pick up—only smithereens and the whirling dust that rises at the moment of breaking. Ai Weiwei drops an old Chinese vase, destroying something relatively priceless—he commits an irreversible act. I used that gesture and its consequences as the motto of my piece and the main inspiration for its sound. At some places (one)[year](later) becomes a contemplation of falling apart, of permanent destruction, but also an exploration of the “forbidden places” of traditional Chinese instruments.

Wojtek Blecharz