EMERGENCE WINS INTERNATIONAL AWARD
Maltese pianist Clifford Borg had a year to remember. He may have started it badly, nursing a leg injury, but he more than made up for that with his remarkable Origin Cd Launch performance at St James Cavalier last May.
Also, last month, his original composition Emergence won the Best Music for Digital Film Award at the Swan Lake Moving Image and Movie Awards (SL:MMA), an international event organised to honour the creation of stimulating visual imagery set to the new age piano music genre.
Year 2009, was rather eventful, because he released his second album Origin locally and internationally, namely via online music store CDbaby.com. He also got to perform at the Manoel Theatre’s Sala Isouard during the recent Notte Bianca and he played in ....Pozzallo.., ..Sicily.... too. But so far, he never won any award so this international award has been quite a pleasant gift. Of course, he would still like to receive an award in his own country one day, but he is still young and he has much more music to offer, so that can still happen.
He was hoping to attend the awards ceremony, which took place in ....Germany.... on October 20, but he didn’t get much support by way of sponsorship from the local authorities. On a brighter note, he is still quite chuffed about the award, especially because the jury panel included Emmy-award winning composer Kurt Bestor. Emergence will be one of the nineteen tracks in a compilation called Acoustic Visions.
Last year he sustained a leg injury, which gave him a lot of time to work on boosting his internet profile. He came upon this website called www.newagepiano.net which is founded by Robert Wierzbicki and registered himself on it. Not long after that, he started receiving information about the site’s network and activities, which included the annual Swan Lake Moving Image and Movie Awards (SL:MIMA). He uploaded his piano piece Emergence (from the Origin album) after which Markus Mayr got in touch asking him if he was interested in collaborating with him. He immediately accepted, and he went on to produce the winning video. He had no idea what to expect but he is very pleased with the clip.
The film is a blend of three separate colour themes revolving around the main character, a chap named Paul, who is busy with a new fantastic career-job. The ‘full colour’ scenes portray Paul’s ‘real life’ away from the computers, online social networks, electronic gadgets and so on. This segment of his life is brightly coloured and looks brilliant to his friends and his girlfriend. The scenes with dim colours reflect those moments when Paul is pretending to be happy with his life, trying to achieve gratification from his achievements. Then there are the ‘black and white’ scenes. These reflect Paul’s innermost emotions, the place deep down where he cannot hide the fact that he is unhappy. Annette (his girlfriend) discovers he has been lying and pretending to be happy over the phone and argues with him that his work has taken over his life, leaving him no time to share with other people.
The video is very realistic, because it reflects an unfortunate truth in today’s day and age where careers and the internet seem to have taken precedence over other, more important things that life has to offer, such as relationships and friendships. It is a reflection of the overbearing materialistic streak that seems to have ingrained itself in ‘modern life’.
So far, he is very pleased to say that his album “Origin”, has been very well-received by the public and by the music critics too. Furthermore, music from Origin is going to be used on a DVD release by the German Company Cascade Medien. The documentary about European gardens will be released worldwide, also in the Blu-Ray format.
To date he has performed in ..London.., ..Paris.., ..Germany.., ..Egypt.., ..Brussels.., ..Amsterdam.. and ....Sicily..... He has other gigs coming up and he is presently engaged with the Bilateral Embassy of Malta in ....Brussels...., where he will perform during an exclusive Maltese evening at the Brussels Hilton next month.
He will also perform at St James’ Church in Piccadilly, ....London.... either next December. The occasion will be the launch of an exhibition about ..St John’s.. Co-Cathedral by French artist Laurent Muller and is being organised by the Malta Tourism Authority and the Malta High Commission in ....London.....
He is currently very busy working on a new website as well as promoting his music online and sending out the album to various industry contacts. Musically, he is currently engrossed in his third album, which will be a crossover of various styles. He is also working with Hungarian video director Thomas Popovic, who will be producing video clips to accompany his music. He has already started working on Drifted, his first album.
For more info please log on to www.cliffordborg.com
http://www.newagepiano.net