The title of the work, "Fusing, Refusing, Diffusing," reveals the central idea I intend to express in the music. I choose the three words with the same root "fuse" to represent three phases of the timbral orchestration I'd like to explore: to fuse varieties of timbre by finding their similarities, to refuse the unity of the sounds by emphasizing the uniqueness of every single instrument, and to diffuse the hybrid or independent timbre to expand the texture, the idea, and the tension.

The idea is related not only to my research interest in the manipulation of the timbre, but also to the current situation of my country. In March 2014, many students and citizens in Taiwan occupied the parliament to protest against an illegal under-the-table approval of the trade treaty with China and prevent the government from destroying the democracy and selling Taiwan to China, which intends to aggress upon Taiwan economically and politically. Therefore, I try to transform the political issues into music to express the intention to refuse the gradual fusion and the diffusion of the refusal as a tribute to the brave protesters in Taiwan.

Fusing, Refusing, Diffusing: for 9 Instruments (2015)

Lily Chen, born in Taiwan, is a composer exploring sonic and theatrical potentials in both acoustic and electronic music. Her music shapes evocative atmospheres that point towards subtle poetic commentary on her observations about literary, emotional, or social aspects of the contemporary situation. She received her Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied with Ken Ueno, Edmund Campion, Franck Bedrossian, and Cindy Cox. She also received her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan, under the instruction of Chung-Kun Hung. She is currently an Assistant Professor of composition at Taipei National University of the Arts. For more information, please visit – http://chenlily.com