«The title, three heads and six arms, stems from my Chinese and official middle name “Nuoja.” Nuoja, more commonly spelled as “Nezha” in the English translation, is a protection deity from Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese folklore. My mother insisted on naming me after this ancient, mythological figure because she envisioned I would become “a genderless being fueled by rage and pain”, and she was not wrong. Although Nuoja is usually depicted as a youth flying around on the Wind Fire Wheels with a Fire-tipped Spear in hand, Nuoja is sometimes depicted with three heads and six arms. This is the debut performance of myself as Nuoja in my “three heads and six arms” form.» – Jonah Nuoja Luo Haven
Jonah Nuoja Luo Haven is currently a fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
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The event will take place in the courtyard.
Free admission until capacity is reached.
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Jonah Nuoja Luo Haven is a composer, improviser, and pianist. Driven by writers of Auto-theory, he composes as a way of bearing loose witness to life—an expression of aging. His music has been performed throughout Europe, the US, the UK, Russia, China, and Taiwan. He was awarded the Luciano Berio Rome Prize in Musical Composition (2025), a DAAD One-Year Research Grant (2024-25), the I Creation/Mivos Prize for Chinese Composers(2021), the Bernd-Alois-Zimmermann Composition Prize of the City of Cologne (2018), an Edition Zeitgenössische Musik Portrait CD, and won first prize in loadbang's International Composition Competition (2023), the International Acht Brücken Composition Competition (2021) and the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik Commission Competition (2020) among others. Haven's debut portrait CD gasser (released in September 2023 on Wergo) was nominated for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Current collaborations include a large ensemble piece with sine tones titled as rage gone to seed for ensemble mosaik, an orchestral work titled parhelion for Eroica Berlin commissioned by EZM's Orchesterförderung, and a concert-length work titled naomi for Juliet Fraser and the Riot Ensemble.