Completed August 14, 2021
Premiered November 17, 2023 by the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ryan Haskins

Selected as the Grand Prize winner of the New York Youth Symphony's First Music Commission

Events in 2020-21 made me reconsider what ‘Asian Americanness’ and ‘Christianity’ meant to me, particularly in the aftermath of the Atlanta shootings in March 2021. The ambiguities I contemplated were both personal and historical in scope: growing up, I had encountered some of the same self-loathing Christian purity culture that had inadvertently produced the Atlanta shooter. Yet I could not deny the very tangible healing that my family and I found in the church. Historically, Christianity has long been wrapped up in the ugliness of colonialism and assimilation - there is a level of cultural erasure in the fact that 42% of Asian Americans identify as Christian, compared to significantly lower numbers in Asia itself. Yet at the same time, some of the Asian American churches that formed in the 19th century were important places of refuge for early immigrant communities. Many of these churches have gone on to serve their communities for generations and continue to be places of home for people today.

Themes of home and community lie at the heart of Songs of Refuge. The piece examines its subject matter from a distance at first, opening with haunting ambiguity as a solo violin floats high above the orchestra’s shimmering textures. There are moments of fleeting warmth, exemplified by soft, chorale-like winds and brass; at the same time, the strings retreat in and out of pitchless white noise, as though afraid to speak clearly. Toward the middle, the solo violin leads the orchestra in a hymn-like progression, as a speaker before a congregation. As the music returns to a place of drifting equivocation, the hymn reemerges from within wild, shimmering textures and breaths of air. The piece draws to a close with the opening gesture, fading back into uncertainty with dust-like rustling. 

Much of Songs of Refuge draws on hymns of personal significance to myself and my parents, most prominently including motifs based on When I Survey the Wondrous Cross and Before the Throne of God Above. The piece is dedicated to my family - not just my immediate, but also in the communities I call home.

Large Ensemble

Songs of Refuge, for chamber orchestra

performed and recorded by L'Instant Donné

musica spolia (quartet version)

Completed September 14, 2022
Premiered June 3, 2023 at Current Space by Danielle Williams (cond.), Mind on Fire, and recorded live by Jason Charney

Supported by New Music USA’s Creator Development Fund for 2022-23
Commissioned by Mind on Fire

Original text:

Movement I - The apparition of these faces in the crowd...

worn-down, faded bench 
companion to weary travelers 
catching their breath between stations
we sat together
laughing into each other’s shoulders
as we ducked beneath neon-singed clouds 
of rush hour smoke
rolling, tumbling down
old-town alleys turned glass walkways 
noodle bars turned Apple Stores

Taoist temples turned shopping malls 
teeming 
thrumming
into the night
our hands nearly touched 
amidst the rhythms of the crowd 
as indefinite and fleeting
as the skyline around us 
my train arrives
I rise to leave
looking back through tinted plastic, I wonder 
in this city of forgetting
will you remember me?

Movement II - ...petals on a wet, black bough.

when I returned
the bench was no longer there 
they turned it into 
a Starbucks
the largest in the world 
I went in
a ghost among the rows of emptied Gravitas blends 
silhouetted against the Roastery Bar’s harshly gilded tones 
floating up the escalator past smoky mocha updrafts 
and glimmering Tom Dixon fixtures
when through a tinted mezzanine glass panel -

I see us
          past coffee-stained mugs and soft curls of wispy steam 
     together, sitting
undisturbed by the surrounding rush 
of raindrops and unfilled orders
the moment suspended
     a gentle warmth about us
unconcerned, content
as we laugh, sip, and remember -
hazily I saw their outlines rise
the pair evaporating with the last of the moisture 
into the crowd, out the doors
as a gust of smog blew in 
and filled their void

they built a bigger Starbucks in Chicago.

Nanjing West Road, for soprano, mixed ensemble, and fixed media

Performed and Recorded by Hub New Music at the 2023 Del Mar International Composers Symposium

The title of the piece comes from a modern poem written in 2022 by Yuanxiang Huang. The poem was a response to the ‘Chained Woman Incident’ that was reported in Xuzhou, China. The victim of the incident, Yang, who gave birth to eight children, was found chained up by her husband in the basement. As investigations went on, it was unfolded that Yang was also a victim of human trafficking, who at the time of the investigation, suffer from severe mental health issues.

The Poem The Funerary (陪葬), was written to address the social issues reflected by the
‘Chained Woman Incident’ in a dark and sarcastic manner. The poem was banned and censored in China very shortly after it was published, along with the silencing of any criticism or anger towards the incident or its corresponding social issues. This piece which uses the same name as the poem is not meant to be a direct musical translation of the poem, but rather a personal interpretation of it, along with my frustrations towards the current social issues and censorship of my home country China.

The poem that inspired this piece:

The Funerary
Someone kept the posture of dancing in their graves
Someone's grave, a guitar, with songs loud and rave
Someone's bones lie sloppily, like matchstick figures in children's picture books
in life with pains unspecific, in death with abstract forms paved
Someone's burial articles, are unconsumed expensive imported medicine
papers rotten, handwriting in ophryon engraved
till I saw, a daughter,
with an iron chain buried with her in graves, died of natural causes,
twenty years, the chain has been nourished by the body, fine and smooth
only to find, the chain has long been tied to my neck and throat
like a pube from a large family, venereal diseases passed down from generations buried deep, effective prevention of hanging yourself, no hindrance of spreading your legs The other end ties to this yellow earth, simple and honest, thriving population

- Original poem by Yuanxiang Huang (黄远翔), English translation by Zhiyi Wang

陪葬(The Funerary)

Its harmonies, textures, and timbres are the sonic equivalent of a color palette saturated with neon. Its figurations that speed up and slow down, weave in and out, are reminiscent of cars - autonomous micromachines operating within the confines of a macro world.
•
Commissioned by the Fall 2023 Berkeley New Music Ensemble

📷: Josiah Adrineda

Hyperlight Highway, for sinfonietta

Performed by the Contemporary Music Ensemble at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Pre-College, May 4th, 2019
Sean Mori, Violin
Jessica Phongsa, Violin
Sydney Whipple, Viola
Abigail Leong, Cello
Josie Chan, Piano
Haejin Lee, Harp
Joey O'Neill, Flute
Guarav Rane, Horn
Briana Hanson, Percussion

Program notes: "Essence of Time" may best be described as "music for music's sake." I had no particular source of external inspiration, other than the fact that I had no experience writing for this unique instrumentation. I had to learn to utilize the wide variety of instruments to their advantage and then to combine the many timbres in a way that I had not done before. The title "Essence of Time" came to me after realizing that the repeated E which occurs in the middle section has the semblance of a ticking clock. The fact that "E" also symbolizes the first letter of my name was an unplanned yet fortuitous coincidence. The strings and piano open the piece with a low D pedal and a ruminative theme played by the horn. This theme is developed upon and altered while the harmony changes in the strings gradually until finally, the strings break out in a dissonant cluster which eventually subsides and gives way to the ticking clock. The repeated E is played first by the piano, then by the harp, then by the horn. The passage of time becomes more and more relentless despite all that is going on around it. Finally the clock stops and the music breaks into a festive dance in 12/8 time with heavy influence of jazz harmonies. All the instruments play this until the dance finally hits its culmination and several interludes by broken up fragments of the ensemble bring about a peaceful conclusion -- ending with the same theme and low D pedal that sounded from the beginning. I'd like to express my thanks to Michael Roest and the CME for the opportunity to create this, and I hope they have enjoyed the process as much as I have!

Essence Of Time (2019)

Lumina (2020)
for orchestra (2222.4331.3perc.harp.pno.strings)

Performed by the USC Thornton Symphony (Donald Crockett, conductor)

Program note:

"Lumina" explores the spectrum of light and dark and the murkiness in between. Using swift contrasts between bright, sharp timbres and cloudy textures and dense harmonies, the piece captures sudden bursts of radiance amongst the eeriness of shadows.

Hyperlight Highway, for sinfonietta

jnsa

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