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ARTISTS CONFRONTING SOCIETY - A PANEL DISCUSSION AND PERFORMANCE

  • US China Music Institute Online Bard College Conservatory of Music Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504 (map)

ASIAN
AMERICAN
VOICES

Zoom Webinar Starting at 8pm EST

Panelists

Huang Ruo, composer
David Henry Hwang, playwright
Charlton Lee, violist
Jindong Cai, conductor
Takuma Itoh, composer
Jungyoon Wie, composer
Erberk Eryilmaz, composer
Vijay Iyer, composer

Zoom Link

bard.zoom.us/j/87308776994?pwd=NUhqbXJwUW5oRHhEZzFqODFFeVVtQT09

Passcode: 885849

YouTube Livestream Starting at 9:30pm EST

Performance

DEL SOL QUARTET
Huang Ruo, A Dust in Time, passacaglia for string quartet (2020)

Livestream Starts at 9:30pm EST

Festival composer-in-residence Huang Ruo, Tony award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, violist Charlton Lee of the Del Sol Quartet, and artistic director of the China Now Music Festival, Jindong Cai, along with other guest artists, will discuss their experience as Asian American artists and reflect on how this particular moment in history has shaped their creative process and their views on the role of the artist in society.

Following the panel discussion, and in celebration of their October 15 CD release, the Del Sol Quartet will present their recording of Huang Ruo’s meditation on the pandemic, A Dust in Time.

About the Participants

Featured
Huang Ruo
Huang Ruo

Composer-in-residence, China Now Music Festival

Composer Huang Ruo has been lauded by The New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls “Dimensionalism.” Huang Ruo’s diverse compositional works span from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, architectural installation, multi-media, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film. His music has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Asko/Schoenberg, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta. He has written 8 operas including M. BUTTERFLY, PARADISE INTERRUPTED, and AN AMERICAN SOLDIER, which was named one of the best classical music events in 2018 by The New York Times. He served as the first composer-in-residence for Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam. Huang Ruo was born in Hainan Island, China in 1976 - the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s when China was opening its gate to the Western world, his education expanded from Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutoslawski, to include the Beatles, rock and roll, heavy metal, and jazz. He earned a BM degree from the Oberlin College, and MM and DMA degrees from the Juilliard School. Huang Ruo is a composition faculty at the Mannes School of Music. Huang Ruo’s music is published by Ricordi. (www.huangruo.com)

Del Sol Quartet
Del Sol Quartet

Ensemble-in-residence, China Now Music Festival

Del Sol began as a thought on the night shift at Fermilab. Charlton Lee loved the cutting edge of physics research – always looking for the next discovery, pushing boundaries. But he missed the way music connected people, building community by communicating in ways physics never would. What if he could bring that scientific passion for exploration to a string quartet?

Twenty-six years later, Del Sol is still sharing music that brings out the endorphins. Music that asks why not?

Fascinated by the feedback loop between social change, technology, and artistic innovation, the San Francisco-based ensemble is a leading force in 21st century chamber music - whether introducing Ben Johnston’s microtonal Americana at the Library of Congress, taking Aeryn Santillan’s gun-violence memorial to the streets of the Mission District, exploring Andean soundscapes with Gabriela Lena Frank and traditional musicians, or collaborating with Huang Ruo and the anonymous poets who carved their words into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station during the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The current Del Sol lineup, marked by the arrival of violinist Sam Weiser alongside mainstays Kathryn Bates and Ben Kreith, bring a fresh energy, freedom, and precision to the group.

Recognized as a “vigorous champion of living composers”, Del Sol has premiered hundreds of works by composers including Terry Riley, Gabriela Lena Frank, Frederic Rzewski, Ben Johnston, Chinary Ung, Mason Bates, Tania León, Erberk Eryilmaz, Theresa Wong, Reza Vali, Mohammed Fairouz and Peter Sculthorpe.

With its deep commitment to education, Del Sol has reached thousands of K-12 students through inventive school performances, workshops, coaching, and residencies. The Quartet members also have worked closely with student composers, musicians and faculty artists at universities across the country.

Jindong Cai
Jindong Cai

Director, US-China Music Institute
Bard College Conservatory of Music

Conductor Jindong Cai is the director of the US-China Music Institute, professor of music and arts at Bard College, and associate conductor of Bard’s The Orchestra Now. Before coming to Bard, Cai was a professor of performance at Stanford University. Over the 30 years of his career in the United States, Cai has established himself as an active and dynamic conductor, scholar of Western classical music in China, and leading advocate of music from across Asia.

At Bard, Cai founded the annual China Now Music Festival. In its first three seasons, China Now presented new works by some of the most important Chinese composers of our time, with major concerts performed by The Orchestra Now at Bard’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and Stanford University. In 2019, the festival premiered a major new work by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Zhou Long, Men of Iron and the Golden Spike—a symphonic oratorio, in commemoration of the Chinese railroad workers of North America on the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Erberk Eryilmaz
Erberk Eryilmaz

Composer and performer Erberk Eryılmaz is recognized for bringing the energy of Turkish folk music to the concert stage with a creative and dramatic approach. His compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, and the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba. His work, "Was her face the moon or sunlight?", as part of the Moon Arts Project, is expected to be sent to the moon in 2021. He is co-director of Hoppa Project which aims to promote music from Eastern Europe and the Middle East by performing the music of the region with a wide range of styles from folk to newly commissioned contemporary music. erberkeryilmaz.com

David Henry Hwang
David Henry Hwang

David Henry Hwang’s stage works includes the plays M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, Chinglish, Kung Fu, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Elton John & Tim Rice’s Aida (co-author), Flower Drum Song (2002 revival) and Disney’s Tarzan. Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, a Grammy Award winner who has been twice nominated, and a three-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Called America’s most-produced living opera librettist by Opera News, he has written five works with composer Philip Glass and is a 2006 Grammy Award winner for Ainadamar, with music by Osvaldo Golijov. Hwang has also worked with composers Bright Sheng, Unsuk Chin, and Howard Shore. His upcoming opera with composer Huang Ruo, The Rift, will premiere in spring 2022 at Washington National Opera in D.C.

Hwang co-wrote the Gold Record “Solo” with the late pop icon Prince and was a Writer/Consulting Producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair from 2015-2019. He is currently creating a TV series for Netflix and penning the live-action musical feature film The Hunchback of Notre Dame for Disney Studios as well as a movie to star actress Gemma Chan.

Hwang serves as Head of Playwriting at Columbia University School of the Arts and sits on the Board of the American Theatre Wing, where he recently completed a term as Chair. His latest work, Soft Power, written with composer Jeanine Tesori, premiered at Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theatre, where it won six 2018 Ovation Awards. Its subsequent run at the Public Theatre in NYC received four 2020 Outer Critics Honors, a 2020 Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theatre Album and was a Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Takuma Itoh
Takuma Itoh

Takuma Itoh’s music has been described as “brashly youthful and fresh” (New York Times), and has been featured amongst one of “100 Composers Under 40” on WQXR. In 2018, Itoh was instrumental in creating an innovative education program, Symphony of the Hawaiian Birds, which has since brought over 10,000 young students to hear new orchestral compositions alongside original animations that raise awareness of Hawai‘i’s many endangered bird species. Other recent highlights include a work for Invoke (string quartet with ‘ukulele doubling) American Postcards: Picture Brides (Hawaii 1908-1924) that used photographs collected by historian Barbara Kawakami to tell the story of the first Japanese women immigrants who came to Hawai‘i; Faded Aura for Hub New Music and shakuhachi player Kojiro Umezaki, which was performed around Japan on a tour with the Asia American New Music Institute; a collaboration with the American Wild Ensemble for their tour of Hawai‘i, including a performance at the Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park; and a work for the Del Sol Quartet as part of The Joy Project intended to be performed outdoors where the audience can enjoy while social distancing.

In addition, he has been the recipient of the Barlow Endowment general commission, Music Alive: New Partnerships grant with the Tucson Symphony, the Chamber Music America Classical Commission, the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize, six ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, and the Leo Kaplan Award. Upcoming commissions include works for the Albany Symphony and the Hawai‘i Symphony.

Itoh is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where he has taught since 2012. He holds degrees from Cornell University, University of Michigan, and Rice University.

Vijay Iyer
Vijay Iyer

Composer-pianist VIJAY IYER (pronounced “VID-jay EYE-yer”) has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in modern music. He was described by Pitchfork as "one of the best in the world at what he does," by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” by the New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.” A musical innovator, an active collaborator, and a member of multiple artistic communities, Iyer continues to reimagine the role of the musician in the 21st century. Iyer’s Uneasy, a trio recording made with his friends and collaborators Linda May Han Oh on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, was released by ECM in April 2021 to wide acclaim, the Boston Globe calling it “extraordinary,” and noting it as “another entry in Iyer’s extensive oeuvre, reaffirming his status as one of the most creative figures in improvised music.”

Iyer has been voted DownBeat Magazine's Artist of the Year four times - in 2018, 2016, 2015 and 2012 - and Artist of the Year in Jazz Times' Critics' and Readers' Polls for 2017. Iyer was named a 2017 United States Artists Fellow, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, and a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Artist. He holds a lifetime appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, with a joint affiliation with the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.

Learn more at https://vijay-iyer.com

Charlton Lee
Charlton Lee

Del Sol Quartet, viola and artistic director

delsolquartet.com/charlton

Jungyoon Wie
Jungyoon Wie

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Jungyoon Wie is a composer, educator, pianist, and producer. Themes of identity have been the center of her compositional journey, and her current research involves creating a short film in collaboration with filmmaker Toko Shiiki, dancers Rie Kim and Jun Wakabayashi, and Converge String Quartet which explores shifting dynamics of identity, otherness, and the marginalized experience of women. This film highlights a string quartet by Ms. Wie, han, which uses Korean, folk, traditional, European, American, and contemporary expressive modalities. jungyoonwie.com/

Earlier Event: October 13
UNDERCURRENTS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN MUSIC - A MULTIMEDIA CHAMBER CONCERT
Later Event: October 16
SYMPHONIC PORTRAITS - WITH THE ORCHESTRA NOW