Since moving to Portland, Oregon in 2016 summer, my desire to engage in the music scene finally comes true just lately.  When I was in Ghent, New York during the OMI artist residency in 2017 summer, I was introduced to Stephen Cohen. Two of us are from Portland and other ten some fellows are of different nationals. Stephen is a performing and recording artist, composer, singer/songwriter, and visual artist. On the other hand, I have been composing on the writing table. Although the piano is my primary instrument, my qugin, a Chinese 7-string zither, was brought to the residency in Ghent too.* During our stay, Stephen and I had the chance to collaborate with each other, as well as with Italian electronic composer Alberto Novello. The result of the improvisation was memorable.

“Where Do We Go?” https://youtu.be/aDHpasyDJS8

Back to Portland in November, Stephen was very generous, initiating a jam session to improvise with me. We met in Mike Prager’s basement, a private audio studio, and did it again!

In addition, I was offered to record a track of my own. Prior to this opportunity, I had never thought about being the sole musician in a music production. Playing string bass in the orchestra and playing piano for dance and chorus was very comfortable to me. Furthermore, conducting the college orchestra was a stretch when teaching at Reed College but it was fine (since I turned my back to the audience).  Solo? Okay — I accepted the challenge!

Therefore my first solo debut “Lullaby” goes to play zither and sing along.  It is a lullaby that I have wanted to hear from my mom and I have wished to sing as I imagine how generations of women pass their lullaby to their offspring. The picture of a woman holding a baby, despite its presumption of joy, is not without luck and social security: growing up in poverty, my mom almost followed her mom’s death from the food poison — through dreams only could my mom search for her mom for years; my first daughter died before her birth — a tremendous regret to me that a lullaby cannot be possibly heard. It is my wish of fulfillment, for the generations of women of my family, as well as many families with the tragic loss and misfortune, to share our feeling through this little song “Lullaby.”

I composed this Lullaby with the conventional form in mind.  The zither plays three basic types of sounds: harmonics, open strings, and glissando. The symbolism of these sounds is philosophically rooted in Chinese culture: heaven, earth, and human. The song “Lullaby” follows the traditional formal scheme to start and end with the heavenly sound and unfolds with variations of the theme. The most unconventional part of this piece is the way that the voice is above the accompaniment (i.e. the zither in this recording). In classical zither music, the voice and the glissando play the same thing and move simultaneously.

Special gratitude goes to Mike Prager for lending his time and excellent ear to create the recording.

*Guqin, check out more here to know how it is made.