Tôn Thất An‘s original score for Glorious Ashes / Trở tản rực rỡ, a new film by Vietnamese director Bùi Thạc Chuyên which just had its world premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival is now available on Bandcamp.
The score was composed and recorded during the pandemic in the course of the second half of 2021, with composer in Taiwan, director in Vietnam and editor Julie Béziau in France.
Tôn Thất An once assembled his international posse of friends and long time musical collaborators: Edric Chang (viola), Lin Hu Wei (cello) and Allen Wu (percussion and monochord) in Taiwan, Trần Thiên Lâm (bamboo flute) in Vietnam, Keith Lee (guzheng) in Hong Kong, Goh Nakamura (zither) in the US, Vanessa Sanfilippo (prepared piano) and guitarist extraordinaire Nguyen Le in France, and also Filipino singer Dennis Astorga, actress/singer Mai Thu Hường and Tâm Quỳ, the composer’s mother, for the experimental vocal parts.

“Working on the score was quite a challenging experience, because of the pandemic, of course, but also because director Bùi Thạc Chuyên isn’t a very expansive person. He could only tell me when I was getting close to it with my music, but I was basically left to my own device to find out! Thankfully, editor Julie Béziau provided lots of useful information from her past experience with him when the two worked on “Adrift” (Chơi với) together, more than a decade ago. It was really like getting lost in a dark forest and finding my way as the days go by.
Eventually we nailed it when I came to France to work on the final mixing with Roman Dymny and Julie. Our joined forces allowed the music to meet the film’s needs.
On the last day, during a ZOOM meeting, a beaming Bùi Thạc Chuyên said that after all the years working on the film he was so glad to finally reconnect to his original impetus. To me, that was the highest compliment.“

Listen to the soundtrack:
(click on the image to open in new tab)