for toy pianos and ping-pong balls performed by Tiffany Lin performed at the Chapel Performance Space in Seattle, February 2009

Flirt : Terrier

for nagauta voice and taiko performed by On Ensemble.

Two by Four (excerpt)

Excerpt from Kidnapping Water: Bottled Operas

Kidnapping Water: Bottled Operas (Kun)

Mò Shēng 墨声 Ink Sound is inspired by the calligraphic impulse. The simplicity and density of sound relates to the amount of ink on a brush prompted by an exhibition of Pan Gongkai’s paintings. Musicians use techniques that vary the bowing pressure, similar to the textures of ink density. The notation contains musical gestures that can be read in any order by the string quartet, similar to how an ink brush painting can be experienced.

Mò Shēng 墨声 Ink Sound

Rehearsal excerpt from TURBINE to be performed June 26-28, 2015, by Leah Stein Dance Company and Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia at the Fairmount Water Works in Philadelphia

TURBINE excerpt

Excerpt Version 2.0 music created for choreographers Archana Kumar and Ying Zhou

SAMAI: Lost in Time

for soprano, shakuhachi, shamisen, 17-string koto, percussion composed for and premiered at the Fukuoka Gendai Hogaku Festival. Live recording performed by Ora-J at the International House of Japan on 20 October 2006.

Forbidden Circles

excerpt from Ishquoh for cello solo by Byron Au Yong

Ishquoh: Where Sounds Meet

from Byron Au Yong's CD Walking released by Periplum

Entry (from Walking)

Excerpt from Farewell: A Fantastical Contemplation on America's Relationship with China created for Spectrum Dance Theatre and performed at The Moore Theatre in Seattle in 2010.

Chinese Hoedown

My grandparents fled China in 1938. They left their first daughter. I wonder what lullaby my grandmother would have taught the child she left behind.

The music is both intimate & cinematic with vocalists Gina Sala & Aiko Shimada + string bass player Marc Collins & yours truly on erhu/water gongs.

Daughter 女儿 (from YIJU 移居)

Byron Au Yong (歐陽良仁) composes songs of dislocation prompted by a broken lineage. Born to Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh and raised in the Pacific Northwest, his upbringing informs a creative process that examines the contradictions between the American Dream and sustainability. Variety calls one of Au Yong’s musicals “claustrophobic and expansive, intimate and existential, personal and political all at once.” The Seattle Weekly says that his “interdisciplinary works are as exquisite and imaginative as they are unclassifiable.” Dedicated to intercultural collaboration, Au Yong creates across disciplines with an attention to the ways people connect with the places they call home.

Current projects include Activist Songbook and Forest Aeternam. Recent performances include (Be)longing, also known as Trigger, or The Ones, a music theater forum, with libretto by Aaron Jafferis, about coming of age in an age of guns performed at Virginia Tech Moss Arts Center, MDC Live Arts, and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. His Water Partitas, for multimedia solo strings, have been performed by The Afield at National Sawdust and HIFA (Harare International Arts Festival). 

Au Yong has been composer-in-residence with the A/P/A Institute at NYU, Center for Migration and the Global City at Rutgers University, Exploratorium, International Festival of Arts & Ideas, Montalvo Arts Center, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Westminster Choir College, Weston Playhouse, Sundance Institute Theatre Labs, Virginia Tech Center for the Arts, and Yale Institute for Music Theatre.

Honors include a Creative Capital Award and Time Warner Foundation Fellowship. Internationally, Au Yong has received support from Aldeburgh Music in the UK, the Dragon Foundation in Hong Kong, the Darmstadt Institute in Germany, and Foundation Gaudeamus in Holland.

Recordings of his music are available on New World Records, Periplum and Present Sounds Recordings. His namesake comes from Lord Byron and Ouyang Xiu (歐陽脩), two poets who wrote about love. Au Yong holds degrees in musical theater writing, dance and music theory and composition from NYU, UCLA and the University of Washington.

Byron Au Yong (歐陽良仁)

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