Aurélienne Brauner, cello

i. contrails [0:00]
ii. deserts [1:37]
iii. mountains [3:33]
iv. night [5:34]

I marvel at the ease with which we traverse continents and cross oceans today. Trading routes that once took caravans months, over treacherous terrains, are now travelled in a matter of hours; Asia and Europe are merely linked by one night’s sleep. "aerial silk roads" depicts this experience of transcontinental travel: sitting by the airplane window, as landscapes of Central Asia silently parade by below.

aerial silk roads (2021): for solo cello

Text by Li Qingzhao 李清照 (1084 – ca. 1151)
English translation by the composer

I seek
cold and lonely
in vain

the cold spells after warmer days
are the toughest to bear
wine is no match for the winds

migrating geese 
the same ones from spring

withered yellow petals on the ground
no one to sweep them up

keeping watch at the window alone
wondering when night falls

the soft rain patters on
as night descends
sorrow is an understatement


寻寻觅觅  冷冷清清
凄凄惨惨戚戚
乍暖还寒时候  最难将息
三杯两盏淡酒  怎敌他
晚来风急
雁过也  正伤心
却是旧时相识
满地黄花堆积
憔悴损   如今有谁堪摘
守著窗儿独自   怎生得黑
梧桐更兼细雨
到黄昏  点点滴滴
这次第  怎一个愁字了得

Chorus Austin
cond. Ryan Heller

07/2021: Austin, TX

Sheng Sheng Man (2021): for SSAA chorus and piano

Samuel Zacharia, viola

I. Hot Jupiters [0:00]
II. Ocean Worlds [1:16]
III. Cold Neptunes [3:12]
IV. Super-Earths [4:40]
V. Chthonian Planets [7:49]

As planetary bodies that orbit other stars, exoplanets represent one final frontier in the exploration of space. They not only offer the tantalizing possibility of hosting alien flora and fauna, but also prove that “truth is stranger than fiction” when it comes to the variety of planetary environments that exist beyond our Solar System. There are planets that rain diamond, planets that absorb so much starlight they appear completely black, and even planets that are stripped naked to their cores by orbiting too close to their stars (the Chthonian Planets).

A Catalogue of Exoplanets (2021): for solo viola

Jillian Krempasky, mezzo-soprano
Leone Buyse, flute / piccolo
Emily Richardson, violin
Nathan Hsu, cello
Rachel Chao, piano
Sam Wu, conductor

I. Ascending the Tower of Cranes 登鹳雀楼 [0:00]
II. Silent Mountains 空山不见人 [3:15]
III. Twilights in the Desert 大漠孤烟直 [6:25]
IV. The Big Dipper High in the Sky 北斗七星高 [9:55]

Texts by the Taiwanese poet Yu Kwang-Chung 余光中 (1928–2017)

dedicated to Katherine Chu, the Tianjin Juilliard School, and the iSING! International Young Artists Festival

I. Ascending the Tower of Cranes 登鹳雀楼

白日，已落到山后
黄河，前浪早入了海
至于后浪，源自雪水
还有得流呢，千年万代
你真要上楼去望远吗？
就让我陪着你吧
像穿越电影那样
你带我去指点盛唐
我带你，唉
去回顾二十一世纪

Sun sets behind mountains, the
Yellow River’s currents long emptied into the sea
as to the currents behind, flowing from snowmelt
and will continue flowing, a thousand generations
do you really want to ascend the tower to see farther?
allow me to come with you
just like in those time travel movies
you will bring me to the heyday of the Tang
I will bring you, ah
to look back upon the 21st century

II. Silent Mountains 空山不见人

空山不见人
但峭壁多回声
一声咳嗽
似远又似近
也许那人已转过
右边大斧劈的悬崖
早没于盘旋的松径
空山无人
才真是自在
鸟声，没关系
瀑布声，更没关系
但一声不明的咳嗽
就乱了整幅禅机
你说是吗，王维

among mountains with no one in sight
but sounds echoing on their cliffs
a cough
seemingly both far and close by
maybe the person already turned
the corner to the right
already disappeared beyond the winding trails
among mountains with no one in sight
a most peaceful moment
birdsong, not an issue
the sound of waterfalls, also not an issue
but one unidentifiable source of a cough
disturbs the entire picture of Zen
don’t you agree, Wang Wei?

III. Twilights in the Desert 大漠孤烟直

一切都离你那么远啊
背景全退到了天涯
南宗水墨画的宗师
竟超前试验抽象画
寂寞的天地间
下面，是一片艳黄
上面，是一片通赤
中间，竖一截诡灰
还倒映一道幻紫
但暝色收拾了一切
代之以全面的昏暗
只透漏一点点亮青

everything appears so far away from you
the background retreats to the horizon
the master painters from antiquity
were the first to experiment in abstract landscapes
a lonely space between earth and sky
below, a swath of dark yellow
above, a zone of bright red
in between, a band of ghostly gray
accompanied by a mirage in purple
yet the color of twilight coheres all other colors
representing the entirety of dusk
where only a tiny amount of light lingers

IV. The Big Dipper High in the Sky 北斗七星高

北纬线长
把北斗越放越高
半天寒光
抖动哥舒的宝刀
长安今夜
想正是万家灯火
但在寒外
却已暗穹为帐篷
以星高闪烁为烛光
来伴将军的薄梦

the higher the latitude
the higher the Big Dipper appears in the sky
half the sky lit by cold starlight
rattling the general’s powerful sword
Chang’an tonight
must be lit by the light of ten thousand homes
yet out on the cold steppes
only the dark sky serves as a tent
starlight in place of candlelight
shining upon the general’s shattered dreams

Songs across the Aeons sets four poems by the Taiwanese literary giant Yu Kwang-Chung. Each text responds to a specific classical poem from the Tang dynasty (618–907): in some, Yu injects his wry sense of humor; in others, he reflects upon the sweep of time and history that separates the Tang from us; in yet others, he provides the Tang writers with narrative methods derived from contemporary cinema and photography, allowing us to feel more “at home” in Tang poetry, and inviting the poets of antiquity to speak with renewed vigor and urgency.

NB: Wang Wei penned the original poem Yu is responding to. Geshu Han was a general who failed to secure Tang China's northern borders against marauding Huns. Chang'an, modern day Xi'an, was the Tang capital.

Songs across the Aeons (2021): for mezzo-soprano and ensemble

[workshop recording]

Lyndon Ji, piano

"Tiny Forests" is inspired by the urban planning concept of breaking up a city's concrete-and-glass jungle with plots of miniature forests. While small in scale, they still adhere to the principles of how forests form and grow: a nourishing layer of soil, above which lies (in ascending order) the shrub, sub-tree, tree, and canopy layers. 

Musically, the piece presents three tiny forests interacting within a city environment, and charts their growth as they extend root networks, to connect with each other, and eventually remake their urban contexts into an ideal "garden city."

["Tiny Forests" is a Jury Prize winner in the Sydney International Piano Competition's "Composing the Future" initiative, generously supported by Creative Partnerships Australia]

Tiny Forests (2021): for solo piano

My arrangement of a traditional erhu ("Chinese violin") tune for symphony orchestra.

Racing Horses (2014): arrangement for orchestra

Commissioned and premiered by the Princeton Pianists' Ensemble in Feb. of 2014, on their concert "Piano Battle" in Richard Auditorium, Princeton University, in collaboration with the Harvard College Piano Society.

Pianists: Dana Ramirez, Ethan Campbell, David Zhang, Thomas Reeves, Melissa Tu

Dancing Shadows in an Ice Cave (2014): for five pianos

words and video projection by Carrie Marie Schneider
Jillian Krempasky, mezzo-soprano
Mary Grace Johnson, Nanki Chugh, violins
Molly Wise, viola
Chris Ellis, cello

"I love the water
The rainwater has turned red. 
Red water red water rain.
Be submitted by its lightning storms. 
Float in its floodwaters.
I need you breeze, open sky.
All that is beyond me 
out there in space
The birthing and burning out of stars."

While her followers believe that she has the power to control the winds and rain, the Weather Shaman knows otherwise. She is merely a conduit for forces beyond her comprehension––forces that both nurture and endanger her community; an endless oscillation between divine kindness and cruelty.

developed through Musiqa's Emerging Composer Fellowship

Weather Model (2023): for mezzo-soprano and string quartet

A short arrangement of Xinjiang folk melodies for traditional Xinjiang singer/multi-instrumentalist and symphony orchestra.

Recorded on Sept. 5th, 2014, during the dress rehearsal with Alimjan (阿里木江) as rurape, tambuur soloist and singer. The Xi'an Symphony Orchestra is accompanying.

Part of the "New Silk Road" concert in Xi'an, China; Sept. 6th, 2014.

Fantasia on Themes from Xinjiang (2014): for soloist and symphony orchestra

This piece is written with two concepts in mind: to experiment with non-traditional ways of regarding and treating a mixed chorus and organ, and to express my reverence for the organ as a triumph of human technology.

Thus I entertain the idea that Peking opera troupes serve as in-flight entertainment on interstellar travels in the far future. Gestures, vocal technique, and the ethos of Peking opera allow me to notate for the chorus with more freedom, and leave more to controlled aleatoricism. 

On the other hand, the rhythm-driven organ writing reflects the digital, mechanical, and ultra-precise design that precedes the building a spaceship. The organ is ideal for "playing" the character of the spaceship; it was to late-Medieval priests as spacecraft is to us now.

4/29/2016: Memorial Church, Harvard University
Members of the Harvard University Choir, Radcliffe Choral Society, Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum and Glee Club
Karen Christianson, organ

peking opera on a spaceship (as in-flight entertainment) (2016): for SATB chorus and organ

Commissioned by the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, in celebration of their 60th anniversary

Yangqin Solo: Reylon Yount
Cellos: Audrey Chen, Sophie Applbaum, John Lee, Ryan Song, Brian Zhao

I. Prelude (0:00)
II. Aria (4:26)
III. Rondo (7:51)

The yangqin, or Chinese dulcimer, has a fascinating history. The Chinese name translates as "foreign instrument;" indeed the yangqin is traced back to Persia (modern day Iran), from where it spread both Westward, to Hungary, and Eastward, via the Indian Ocean and over the Silk Road, to China. The yangqin's rich past inspires me to explore the sights, sounds, and smells of travel, layered within the dulcimer's timbre. I am particularly interested in the confluence of pitch choice and tone color; different combinations of the former create substantially different sound worlds within the same instrument.

Intent on focusing on the yangqin, I support it with a cello ensemble, and then present the materials in a traditional three-movement concerto form. While a combination of Chinese and Western musical traditions inspire the musical raw material, the piece is less "about" either than a space where multitudes and contradictions can coexist.

Concerto (2016): for yangqin and cello ensemble

for unaccompanied SATB chorus

I. There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, 
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night, 
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire, 
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one 
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree 
If mankind perished utterly;

And spring herself, when she woke at dawn, 
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

II. June Night

Oh Earth, you are too dear tonight, 
How can I sleep while all around 
Floats rainy fragrance and the far 
Deep voice of the ocean that talks to the ground?

Oh Earth, you gave me all I have,
I love you, I love you, -- oh what have I 
That I can give you in return --
Except my body after I die?

Teasdale Songs (2016): for SATB chorus

commissioned by the Harvard Ballet Company, 
co-produced with the Brattle Street Chamber Players

Our point of departure is "migration." We explore the arduous nature of travel across vast distances, and through tough, hostile environments. We also celebrate the freedom of flight, and the marvel of seeing the world from above. While doing so, we pose the question, "What is home?" then suggest, through dance and music, that perhaps the journey itself IS home. 

workshop recording at the Bowdoin International Music Festival
Annette Jakovčić, cello
Min Joo Yi, piano

full production video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLIozyLRd_o

"warmth, love, romance," from "In Passage" (2017): score for ballet

First Prize in Harp Column's 2020 New Music Contest
Alethea Grant, harp

Paul Hall, The Juilliard School

"for miles on end, the monk's lamp is the only source of warmth.

the monk naps and dreams of spring."

...the end of snow is nirvāṇa (2017): for solo harp

Sumire Hirotsuru, violin
Isabel Kwon, cello

i. bridges
ii. airports
iii. ruins
iv. gardens
v. skyscrapers

When I aspired to be an urban-planner, my favorite pastime was to design and build model cities on Google SketchUp. "SimCity" is a musical analogue to that process. I approached the writing of each movement the same way I conceived of buildings: asking myself the question, "what does it FEEL like to be in this space?"

SimCity (2018) iii. ruins: for violin and cello

Brian Daurelle and Thomas Feng, piano

"Hyperlooping" is inspired by the curved ramps of highway interchanges. While these structures exist on a large scale, a bird's-eye view of them captures not only their grandeur, but also their geometric elegance. When represented in music, individual pitches function as beams, supports, and trusses. Contours and grooves become the swooping patterns that define the most complex of interchanges. Some of the score's notation also attempts to highlight this analogy.

Hyperlooping (2018): for piano four-hands

music for visual artist Liu Wa's neuro-tech installation, "Still."

Past exhibitions:
Beijing M Woods Museum
Harvard Arts First Festival
Yale College Studio Art Thesis Exhibition

Still (2017): for piano and wine glasses

The graphic above is a visualization of global wind patterns; massive amounts of weather data are fed into a supercomputer that then produces a live (or pseudo-live) “wind map.” The swirls and swoops are color-coded: areas of blue and green are relatively calm, while red and purple usually imply devastating conditions in a tropical system. There is something particularly poetic about seeing our atmosphere on such a macro scale; the same colors converted from numerical data also suggest Van Gogh-esque brushstrokes. The confluence of the empirical and the aesthetic in the “wind map” has proved wildly inspiring for the composition of this piece.

The Juilliard Orchestra (reading)
Jeffrey Milarsky, conductor

Wind Map (2018): for orchestra

The fish explore their new streets and avenues and boulevards, making their homes in corals growing out of skyscrapers.

Alice Ivy-Pemberton, violin

Written for Alice's "Drowning Monuments" video project: https://vimeo.com/307881292

Waterways (2018): for solo violin

Depending on the spectra of their local stars, exoplanets’ flora may come in wildly different colors than our own: red, purple, blue, or even black.

Sophia Steger, Isabella Gies, violins
Frida Siegfrist Oliver, viola
Sanae Kodaira, cello

[alien forests] (2019): for string quartet

commissioned by the New York City Ballet's choreographic institute, in partnership with The Juilliard School

North American monarch butterflies undergo an annual migration of epic proportions: from the forests of Canada all the way to the mountains of Mexico. A “super-generation” of butterflies complete the northward journey, following their source of sustenance, milkweed, all the way North.

Through dance and music, we explore the odyssey of the butterflies across vast distances, and through tough, hostile environments. We also celebrate the freedom of flight, and the marvel of seeing the world from above. While doing so, we pose the question, "What is home?" then suggest, through dance and music, that perhaps the journey itself IS home.

Monarch (2019): for flute + piano trio

Tianyu Liu, Russell Iceberg, violins
Aditi Prakash, viola
Claire Kim, cello
Stephen Joven-Lee, piano

i. network architecture [0:00]
ii. garden city [2:26]
iii. airport express [4:56]
iv. night skyline [7:11]
v. interchange station [10:30]

"Mass Transit" is inspired by Shanghai’s metro system— an elaborate network of lines, trains, tunnels / overpasses, and interchange stations. Each movement explores a facet of the subway network: the elegance of optimizing a system map, the variety of connections available in the city (gardens, airports, skyscrapers), and the complexities of multi-layered interchanges, where up to four lines converge. The piece as a whole is also envisioned as a musical “voyage;” the train stops briefly to take in the sights, before resuming its journey onward.

Mass Transit (2022): for piano quintet

Sam Wu's music "abounds in delicate colours, wisps of sound and sylvan textures" (Gramophone). Many of his works center around extra-musical themes: architecture and urban planning, climate science, and the search for exoplanets that harbor life.

Selected for the American Composers Orchestra's EarShot readings and the Tasmanian Symphony's Australian Composers' School, winner of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and First Prize at the Washington International Competition, Sam Wu also received Harvard's Robert Levin Prize and Juilliard's Palmer Dixon Prize. 

Sam’s collaborations span five continents, notably with the orchestras of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Minnesota, Sarasota, Melbourne, Tasmania, Macao, and Shanghai, the New York City Ballet, National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Sydney International Piano Competition, the Lontano, Parker, Argus, ETHEL, and icarus Quartets, conductors Osmo Vänskä, Marin Alsop, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Dina Gilbert, and Benjamin Northey, violinist Johan Dalene, and shēng virtuoso Wu Wei.

Sam has been featured on the National Geographic Channel, Business Insider, Harvard Crimson, Sydney Morning Herald, Asahi Shimbun, People's Daily, CCTV, among others.

From Melbourne, Australia, Sam Wu holds degrees from Harvard University, The Juilliard School, and Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. He is currently on faculty at Whitman College, as their Visiting Assistant Professor in Theory and Composition. Sam's teachers include Tan Dun, Anthony Brandt, Pierre Jalbert, Chaya Czernowin, and Richard Beaudoin.

Sam Wu

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