Composition work samples
1. songs after sufjan
for violin, cello, and piano (dbl. keyboard), 18’.
Live Performances by National Sawdust Ensemble (commissioner); Jacob Schafer, violin, Zan Berry, cello, and Baldwin Giang, piano; and Longleash Trio,
NOTES
songs after sufjan is, in part, an homage to the singer/songwriter/composer Sufjan Stevens. I found myself most intrigued with how Stevens’s lyrics, often intensely lyrical, conflicted, and loaded with symbolism, are usually accompanied by music of simplicity and restraint. I wondered how this ambiguous combination of elements would be transformed if fragmented and cast as purely instrumental music. My piece for piano trio makes use of some of the musical material of Stevens’s songs, such as translating their carefully orchestrated pop production into dreamy microtonal harmony and extended techniques, as a means to evoke both the intimacy and delicate affect of Stevens’s sound worlds. Furthermore, the ghosts of Stevens’s lyrics, when recontextualized against my own music, serve as a starting point for the unique emotional arc of my own work.
The first movement, "I should have known better," Is a reference to the song "Should have known Better” from Stevens’s 2015 album, Carrie and Lowell. Stevens’s lyrics concern his grief over his mother’s death, and the conflicted nature of their relationship, before an unexpected turn towards the light that his newborn niece brings into his life. My work, inspired by the drama of the lyrics, juxtaposes highly contrasting material based on chromaticism and 7 limit-just intonation.
The second movement, “so/than,” is a study in ambiguity. It functions both as an interlude between the outer movements as well as the emotional center of the entire work. It takes some veiled influence from Stevens “Fourth of July,” also from Carrie and Lowell.
The title of the third movement, “to be alone with you,” is a reference to the eponymous song by Stevens, from his 2004 album Seven Swans. I found the lyrics of Stevens’s song, which acknowledge the self-sacrifices required to be alone with someone and with God, especially relevant as I was making hard choices in my own personal life during the COVID-19 pandemic. In these times, to choose to be alone with someone brings both comfort and risk, companionship and awkwardness.
songs after sufjan is dedicated to my mother, Cam Ly, who passed away from cancer in November 2020 as I was writing the piece.
2. intimacies, interruptions
for full orchestra, 12’.
Reading by the Louisville Orchestra, conducted by Teddy Abrams. World premiere on November 15, 2024.
NOTES
intimacies, interruptions is inspired by the furtive moments that exist only within the cracks and fissures of today's hyper-fast and fragmented life-world.
1) The piece opens with a sweeping, post-romantic, but also fragmented motivic idea reminiscent of Wagner or Mahler. This material is quickly consumed by the hyper-organism of the orchestra, which digests it along with a more contemporary syntax. This process yields various forms of sentimental expressivity, including from the post-romantic material itself.
2) In the age of oversaturation and instant gratification, sitting down and sharing a traditional concert hall ritual can open the door to a surprisingly radical kind of intimacy. Threads of lyricism are strewn throughout this work, but they are often presented alongside a shifting cornucopia of orchestral color. A rich diversity of musical material and techniques of ensemble coordination create the tensions and contradictions that shape one level of this work. As these contrasting musical materials collide with and interrupt each other, the resonances they leave behind trace subtle, ephemeral connections.
Like the realism of Caravaggio, which invited audiences to question the line between what was real and what was painting, I invite the audience to use this work as a tool for reflection on the contemporary problem of intimacy. In the concert hall we can experience intimacy, paradoxically, in a room of hundreds of people. Today, at all times, or at no time, can we truly know each other intimately?
3. san clemente syndrome
for cello, harp, electronics, and DMX lights, 10’.
Commissioned and performed by Extended Music Collective.
Click here for score
NOTES
The Basilica di San Clemente is a 14th century church in Rome that has beautifully excavated layers below the surface from the 4th century and the 1st century CE. The basilica is located on the same street as, and just two minutes walking from, two of the most prominent gay bars in Rome. Thinking broadly about its queer affect, the church appears in Andre Aciman’s queer- classic Call my by your name, wherein the palimpsestic history of the church represents Elio’s understanding of desire. Elio later remarks how every new relationship in his life is in some way built on this foundational memory with Oliver, just like “the church is built on the ruins of subsequent restorations...just layers and secret passageways and interlocking chambers.”
My work for cello, harp, electronics, and DMX lights is inspired by about a half dozen visits I made to the church and its neighborhood over several months, during my residence as a Rome Prize winner. I was struck first by the shadowy grates in the lower two layers where one can see all the way through to the top level. Furthermore, the lighting curation highlights the distinct building materials and affects of each layer. Inspired by these reflections, I programmed lighting elements that sculpt the shadows of the cellist and harpist as they play. The layering of the musicians' bodies on top of the shadows behind them creates a palimpsest of anatomies that suggests the Freudian understanding of the interaction between desire and the subconscious intimated by Aciman. In addition to at times emphasizing the play of contrasting musical materials, the visual language also creates a sense of musical time that I believe accords with Elio and many queer people's experience--time as a mixed and imperfect present, one that is informed by trauma but also shards of hope in our past and looks towards the future that is not yet here.
4. PIPA BOY
for ensemble and video, 19’. (Excerpts presented totaling 7.5 minutes).
Performed by Ensemble Garage and Friends, conducted by Elias Peter Brown.
NOTES
PIPA BOY began during my Fulbright Artist Fellowship in Taiwan, where I studied how to play the pipa (a traditional Chinese lute) and composed for the instrument. Conceptualizing a hybrid context in which to feature the pipa alongside western instruments, I realized that the pipa is as much a product of human migration as I am. The video part to PIPA BOY features myself in places where I’ve lived in which identity needs to be interpreted and negotiated, and critically imagines what belonging to a diaspora could mean in the future.
The concept of a ‘post-diaspora’ comes from the writing of theorist Shu-mei Shih, who posits that given the diffuse and post-generational migration of peoples away from their ancestral homelands, “diaspora should have an end date…everyone should be given the chance to become a local.” Though I remain agnostic about whether a utopian ‘post-diaspora’ can or should happen, I’m interested in investigating the conditions of space and time that could make a subject feel both visible and accepted in their cultural difference. One could say that I am seeking and imagining traces of the ‘post-diaspora’ in the present.
The artistic research behind this project was simple: I filmed myself carrying markers of my identity, the pipa and dan nguyet (a traditional Vietnamese lute) while interacting with urban environments to which I have a personal connection. Then I wrote the music in response to the affects generated by the interaction between my identity, the environment, and the medium of video. Lastly, I edited and ordered the video in a non-narrative, but closely integrated syntax with the music.
The first scene takes place in Philadelphia, where I was born. Made in collaboration with Philadelphia-based filmmaker Brian Erickson, I investigate the politicization of the boundaries of Philadelphia’s Chinatown. Against a long history of political organizing from the community, Philadelphia city officials have disrupted the urban geography of Chinatown by installing a highway that bisects the neighborhood and threatened to build a prison and basketball stadium at its edges. In my work, the relationship between video and music explores the thresholds that constitute the identity of Chinatown, and playfully subverts the rigidity of these boundaries.
The second scene, with video in collaboration with Taiwanese filmmaker Chris Kang, is about Ximending, a neon-covered, flashy shopping district in Taipei that blends Asian and western consumerism. I lived a year in this neighborhood, and was interested in how it embodied a drunken, escapist optimism about the future as well as signs of capitalism’s excess. Filmed late at night after the hordes of tourists had left, we feel only the traces of a globalized public in their absence.
The last scene was made in collaboration with Italian filmmaker Andrea Bancone and the actor Gabriele Lepera during my year as a Rome Prize fellow. Our subject was the porousness of place, identity, and history in gay cruising sites around Rome. Filmed at Villa Gordani and Monte Caprino, two beautiful parks with ancient Roman ruins that become hotspots at night for gay sex, as well as Settimo Cielo in Ostia’s beach, we interrogate how queerness and migration intersect with the palimpsestic nature of city life in Rome. Unlike in Philadelphia, boundaries are fluid and slippages are both frequent and discreetly made. Drawing on the work of Jose Munoz, we consider how this porousness allow us to slip between what is present and what is not present, how taking a different look at the past and present that is here allows us to see the horizon of a future not yet here.