While city infrastructures benefit our lives significantly, for those wild animals who share the same city with us, such infrastructures manifest cold concrete replete with danger. Using road infrastructures as an example, about one million animals die by traffic in the U.S. per day. Remaining Sense is a lament for those killed animals, with the first movement focusing on the narration of the tragedy, and the second movement functioning as my reflection of such destruction.

Remaining Sense

WEN II

Purification-for Flute, Clarinet, and Pipa

SF: I Can't Fly To The Moon

Fusion II (2016)

Composed by Huijuan Ling

Performed by:

Shenghua Dai, Erhu
Chris Lennard, Glockenspiel
Rachel C. Walker, Guqin

      Fusion I was a pure fixed media piece, while Fusion II supplements the electronics with Erhu, Guqin, and Glockenspiel, therefore it is an attempt to collaborate the timbre of Chinese instruments into the piece. The fixed media part itself is an attempt to use water sound together with the mimicking burning sound. In an abstract context, to fuse water and fire is possible; in reality, however, water and fire offset each other—it is impossible to make fire on top of the water, meanwhile setting water on top of a stove can reduce the volume of the liquid. The inspiration for the electronic part comes from the sound of fire burning and water running—and the effort to try to mix them together. The acoustic part is an extraction from the electronic part. It outlines pitches that have already been established in the fixed media, then develops based on that outline while leaving room for instrumentalists to improvise with the provided materials. The improvisation is to encourage collaboration between composer and performer. 
     Therefore, the piece is really about fusion, or collaboration between oriental timbre and electronics; between water and fire; and between composers and performers.

Fusion II

“Overlooking View” is inspired by a discussion of flying and floating in the first episode of anime Kara no Kyōkai (Boundary of Emptiness), in which the distinctive differentiation between these two is flying is aiming toward a destination while floating is aimless. Hence it leads to the inevitable falling. In the anime, Tōko (one of the main characters) states that human beings cannot fly all by themselves, and flying is closely related to falling. However, the more people are longing for the sky, the more they tend to disregard this fact. Their attempts result in failure: dying, but also flying.
	This piece was commissioned by Julan Wang.

Overlooking View

Commissioned and performed by the Patchwork Duo.

Shadow Phase  |ˈSHadō fāz|  
noun. 

A darker, foggier stage in a person's psychological development.
The reflection of the non-shadow phase, or the immanent, neutral universe. Immanent can also be considered as the inversion of the shadow phase. Shadow phase and the immanent are inter-transformable.

Shadow Phase

Collaborated with Zhixin Xu.
Text by Li Yu (李煜)

Soprano: Mengchun Yang
Live electronics: Zhixin Xu

2016-04-11 A View From the Edge

Lang Tao Sha

My neighbor has a wind chime,
I wish it weren’t pentatonic.
(but it is)
The wind chime does not develop,
the wind does.

Recorded by JACK quartet, 11/15/2018.

My Neighbor Has A Wind Chime, I Wish It Weren't Pentatonic

Immersion

The Unexpected

The Plasma That Sparks the Fire, The Liquid That Brings The Hurricane was inspired by climate change-related natural disasters and some people’s attitude toward those natural disasters. Therefore the ending of this piece reads: “it doesn’t matter, it is just what it is.”

Special thanks to Line Upon Line Percussion, to whom this piece is dedicated, for making it possible.

The Plasma that Sparks the Fire, The Liquid that Brings the Hurricane

2018 version premiered March 23 2019, 7 PM at St. John’s Unitarian Universalist Church, Cincinnati Soundbox Season 4, by pianist Kara Huber.

Overlooking View (rev.2018)

It's Faraway explores the sonic process of moving from short and percussive to long and resonant.

For Oboe, Violoncello, three percussionists and harpsichord.

It's Faraway

Wobbly Wobbly Wobbly is a play of "wob-ble" and "wob-bl-y," and is inspired and dedicated to my fat cat for our fifth anniversary. Special thank you to all of my amazing performers for bearing with me.

For Melodica, Violoncello, Percussion, and Piano.

Wobbly Wobbly Wobbly

Shades of E explores various possibilities of the note E. There are three movements: Rattling E, Repeated E, and Muffled E. Shades of E is written for and dedicated to pianist Gloria Cheng; may she find the same playful joy in this piece as I did.

Shades Of E

Diagonal Swing is inspired by a weird story I heard at the end of September this year: one of my past teachers, one day, on his drive back home somehow sensed the upcoming danger at an intersection, so he decided to stop several feet away from the intersection while waiting for a stoplight. This turned out to be a brilliant decision: a couple of seconds later, a car driving by a drunk driver swung out of nowhere, and if my teacher had stopped at the intersection instead of several feet away from it, he would have been hit by the car for sure. This story was jokingly titled “Diagonal Drunk Driver” later, and the driver’s swing is the inspiration of this piece.

Diagonal Swing

Dissolving Phrases explores how motivic figures can keep developing while dissolving along the way.

For Soprano Saxophone, Drum Set, and Piano.

Dissolving Phrases

Huijuan Ling is a Chinese composer of contemporary concert music whose work has been heard across China, the US, Canada, and Italy, with major performance and commissions from the Shanghai Philharmonia Orchestra (上海爱乐乐团), CCM Philharmonia Orchestra, Seven Hills Sinfonietta, JACK Quartet, Line Upon Line Percussion, and Patchwork Duo.

In 2019, she won the third prize in the SIMM 2019 International Harpsichord Composition Competition; in 2016, she was a finalist in the CCM Orchestral Composition Competition; and in 2011, she won the Distinguished Work in Experimental Music Award from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (SHCM). Her works have been presented in calls for scores and conferences such as Nief-Norf Summer Festival, Line Upon Line Winter Composer Festival, and Midwest Composer's Symposium (2015, 2016).

Huijuan is currently a Ph.D. student in Composition at Duke University, studying with Stephen Jaffe. She received her MM at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music; her BA at Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Her recent teachers include Andrew Waggoner, Shih-Hui Chen, Michael Fiday, Douglas Knehans, and Miguel A. Roig-Francoli.