Liliya Ugay, Composer

Scored for a short promotional video of the game DNF, as part of my demo for Shenzhen's Cannes, London International Awards, and Top-Digital award-winning ad agency Dotwell Culture Co., Ltd. This sequence depicts a character from DNF visiting Wuhan city, as the fantasy world of the game merges with the real world as we know it.

Disclaimer: I do NOT own the sound effects used in this track.

“Game Character Visits Wuhan” Cue

Track from Geena Marie Hernandez's movie CHICKS

"CHICKS"-track

Performed by Emily Hanna Crane and Hui-Ting Yang

Metamorphoses II

Recorded by Minyoung Rho

“The way out of climate change is inside each of us.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

Meditations on a Warming Planet began as a part of Ann Duhamel's "Prayers for a Feverish Planet" project, which features a collection of works for solo piano that respond in some manner to climate change. Inspired by the ambitiousness of the project and Ann's moving performances, I decided to add three more movements to form the current set of four, each focusing on a different aspect of the crisis.

From a human perspective, the warming of the planet is very gradual, yet relentless, a steady progression (accumulation) toward a more chaotic and less hospitable world. "Parched Earth" depicts the process of desertification, where fertile regions are gradually replaced by arid, unfertile areas. While the process can be natural, the spread of arid regions is increasingly caused (and exacerbated) by human activities.

"Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere—like rivers in the sky—that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics" (noaa.gov). While these are naturally occuring phenomena, their size and the resulting release of moisture as precipitation and potential for flooding are increasing due to climate change. "Atmospheric River" attempts to capture the general phenomena of more frequent and more destructive flooding that is a direct result of a warmer planet.

"Habitat" depicts the progressive loss of species and wildlife, again exacerbated by climate change, in a rather direct manner with a gradual reduction of musical activity leading to a single, isolated, and extremely thin note. Over the course of the movement, a harmonic progression, presented in lush arpeggios at first, is progressively reduced until only its memory persists.

Over the decade beginning in 2012 over 1,700 environmental activists and land defenders have been murdered doing their work. "In Memoriam" is dedicated to the memory of these courageous individuals, focusing on their beautiful, impactful, and inspiring lives. An optional slide show featuring specific individuals is available for performance.

Meditations on a Warming Planet

violin - Yuki Numata Resnick, cello - T.J. Borden, piano - Liliya Ugay

Third World Fable for piano trio (2014)

Liliya Ugay "Oblivion", premiere by Yale Philharmonia and Heejung Park (conductor), 12/10/15, Woolsey hall, New Haven. CT

Oblivion for orchestra (2015)

Jin-Xiang Yu, Soprano
Yale Philharmonia
Lyrics by Sokunthary Svay

Liliya Ugay, Morning Call

performed by Yale Philharmonia, conductor - David Yi
December 7th, 2017, Woolsey hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
To the Lost World was commissioned and premiered by Peter Askim and Raleigh Civic Chamber Orchestra on April 2nd, 2017 in Raleigh, NC at the concert dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Russian Revolution.

Ugay - To The Lost World

David Yi, Yale Philharmonia
12/7/17

Wrest deals intimately with the liminality of the unconscious, and specifically with how the mind moves through stages of unconsciousness fluidly and with a kind of inexorable and invisible momentum. It’s a piece about the way we drift through these liminal spaces as we sleep — and the things that we carry with us without understanding why. It’s also an in memoriam, of sorts, to my grandmother Elizabeth Ann Greenhoe, who died in the summer of 2017 and whose life and death impacted me profoundly.

2/7/17

Wrest for Orchestra

Butterfly Effect-for electroacoustic(2012)

Premiere: 17-04-2019
Place: Leipzig Conservatory, Germany
Honor: Excellence Prize of Electroacoustic Composition Competition of Musicacoustica-Beijing in 2014.

Butterfly Effect-for electroacoustic(2012)

Track Seven - Outro
Chamber version and arrangement with electronics of CADENZA for orchestra
CPP Workshop
Miller Hall, Manhattan School of Music
(Pic-Fl-Cl-B.Cl-2 Perc- Pno-2Vln-Viola-Vc-DB)
2018

Track Seven - Outro, for ensemble and electronics [2018]

Music by Liliya Ugay, text by Sokunthary Svay

Performed by Norfolk Festival Chamber Choir and ensemble; conductor - Simon Carrington, soloist - Bradley Sharpe (countertenor) and Ilya Poletaev (harpsichord), Norfolk Summer Festival 2018, Norfolk, CT

Point of Entry
(written by Sokunthary Svay specially for this piece )

You are awake again

pushing out my insides.

Is it your foot, your hand? 


Now you cry

outside my body 

inside this bedroom

angry and helpless cries    

from your exit. 


I can’t dream

when your cries cut 

through the air. 


Drink this food

my body makes for you

at times in pain, 

yet again and again 

in my love for you.

My desire

keeps you alive. 


Oh, how you have entered my life

dear child. 




What next? 


What now? 


I’m hungry. 


Hold me.


I feel you. 


Don’t leave me. 


Help me. 


Mama. 


I’m waiting for you. 


I’m here.

Ugay - Point Of Entry

Premiered by Benjamin Sung and David Kalhous, Opperman Music Hall, February 1, 2013.

elegy

Performed by Eppes Quartet (Nina Kim, Pedro Maia, Albert Magcalas, Vincent Leung)
1. De-bug
2. Grace

In February 2017, the president of Yale University, Peter Salovey, announced that Yale's Calhoun Residential College, named after John Calhoun - a white supremacist and a national leader who passionately promoted slavery, - was finally to be renamed as Grace Hopper College, in honor of Grace Murray Hopper, a trailblazing computer scientist who also served as a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. To celebrate this occasion, Hopper College organized a series of events dedicated to her memory. "Hopper" quartet was written as a commission from Florrie Marshall and Yale Hopper College and premiered by Kate Arndt, Mathew Woodart, Florrie Marshall, and Guilherme Monegatto on October 3, 2018 in New Haven, CT.
De-bug: The term, that is nowadays known as the process of identifying and removing errors from computer hard(soft)ware, is commonly attributed to Grace Hopper. In 1947, Hopper, allegedly, found an actual insect inside of Harvard’s Mark II Aiken Relay computer that caused its malfunctioning. She made a note “First actual case of bug being found.”
Hopper was known not only for her outstanding intellect and professional excellence, but also keen and witty sense of humor that inspired me to write this metrically tricky and capricious first movement. De-bug builds on 13/8 (2/4+3/8+3/8+3/8) metric frame. In the beginning, the instruments play in rhythmic unison but gradually fall out of synch until uniting again in a triumphant tonal chord sequence.
Grace is my reflection on the passing nature of human memory, and how the perception of memories from the past change with time. This aspect interplays in the actual structure of the piece: the material in the middle-section of this movement is a subordinate “passing” material from the first movement, but here it is extended and developed. Grace is a harmonic and structural resolution of De-bug. Like DE-BUG (U(t)=C),GRACE (R(e)=D) uses the pitch content from the letters in the title of the movement. The combination of pitches results in the same chord with the exception of one pitch (B vs A). This change brings a harmonic resolution to the only semitone in the original chord, turning it into a completely pentatonic sonority.

Hopper - Eppes

For Violin, Viola, Cello, Flute, Bb Clarinet, and Trumpet. This piece is dedicated to the ensemble yMusic.

Liliya Ugay, Morning Call

Liliya Ugay

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