Lakescape IX (2024)
Having been interested in Mahayana Buddhism for a number of years, I went to a Buddhist monastery in upstate New York to study meditation in 1999. One evening, while walking alone by the side of the lake, I caught the sight of a “V” shape floating and extending on the surface of the water. It was a beaver taking a swim under the moon. This image gave me insight into my relationship with silence: underneath the music is a profoundly deep silence upon which I seek to inscribe my signature through sound. It serves as a point of departure that led to a series of works.
Gobi Canticle (2005)
“Gobi Canticle” belongs to a series of compositions that grew out of my admiration for Mongolian music. Its melodic material is based on the theme of “Gobi Polyphony”—a work commissioned and premiered by the erhu player Xu Ke at the Musica Nova Festival in Helsinki in 2003. In this composition, the melody is played against its own inversion; it then alludes to various genres of Mongolian music that include the long-chant, as well as the music of dance and shaman rituals. It concludes with a rendering of a folk song that I learned during my visit to the Nei Monggol region in 1996.
Parts for Floating Space (2002/2014)
“Parts for a Floating Space” was written for and premiered by the Yesaroun’Duo on April 11, 2002 in Boston at Temple Ohabei Shalom’s magnificent sanctuary. It consists of discrete parts; it’s not conceived as a whole. I hope to use the richness of the parts to construct an open-ended architecture with not one, but multiple identities. Each part might stand on its own, combine with one another, collide in superimposition, or connect into a larger continuum. Yet, all of its sounds and rhythmic patterns are derived from one single source. For the premiere, we chose one sequence out of a number of possibilities. As stated above, this sanctuary has been filled with songs and prayers for three quarters of a century; this piece is a tribute to this sacred space.
Inkscape (2014)
In traditional Asian landscape paintings, we often discuss two complementary aspects: brush and ink. Piano, in this composition, serves as the “brush,” and the percussion quartet, the “ink.” Following earlier works such as “Brush-Stroke,” “Aural Hypothesis,” and “Harp Concerto,” “Inkscape” continues to explore the relationship between ink painting, calligraphy, and composition. “Inkscape” was premiered at Boston Conservatory by Sam Solomon (conductor), Yukiko Takagi, and the Boston Conservatory Percussion Ensemble.
Memories of Xiaoxiang (2003)
Xiaoxiang refers to the region in Hunan Province, China where the rivers Xiao and Xiang intersect. A tragic event took place in that region during the Chinese Cultural Revolution: a woman’s husband was killed by a local official. Without the means to seek justice, she decided to take revenge on the official by wailing like a ghost in the forest behind the official’s residence every evening. Months later, both the official and herself went insane. My friend, the Chinese composer Mo Wu-ping (1958–1993) once planned to compose an opera based on this story. However, he only finished the overture before he died of cancer at age 34. I composed “Peking Opera Soliloquy” for alto saxophone in his memory in 1994. In the summer of 2002, I met with his family in Beijing and heard more descriptions of his unfinished project. The story still deeply disturbs me, as I continue to be moved by the power of his soul. I decided to revisit pieces of these memories in this project for electronics and saxophone. In this piece, I use some of the materials from my earlier saxophone composition, Mo Wu-ping’s singing, as well as materials related to that part of the region (including field recordings of the Yao minority people and excerpts from the ancient Chinese zither composition “Water and Mist over Xiaoxiang”). It is the woman’s search for her husband, my friend Mo Wu-ping’s search for her, and my search for him—we are all searching for memories of realities, fragments of truths in this broken, fractured, and scattered soundscape.
Inaudible Ocean
Lei Lab (UC San Diego) was founded to foster collaboration between artists and scientists. The lab explores a vast spectrum of audible data in partnership with oceanographer Dr. Joshua Jones, spanning signals from the infrasonic (as low as 10 Hz) to the ultrasonic (up to 320 kHz). For perspective, human music typically occupies a range of 20Hz to 20 kHz—less than 1% of the frequencies we study.
What renders these signals inaudible to humans? It is not only their frequency range but also their temporal scale. For instance, to perceive the richness of certain echolocation signals, we must transpose their frequencies and decelerate the playback by 10 or even 100 times. This process reveals the intricate acoustic “landscape” of the ocean, where valleys and mountains emerge through awe-inspiring echoes.
“Inaudible Ocean” is our journey into the realms beyond human hearing, where technology serves as our tool and curiosity as our compass. Together, scientists and artists craft a "sonic flashlight" to illuminate the hidden wonders of the ocean for our listeners.
Tonight’s performance marks the premiere of “Inaudible Ocean” by contraBAND, Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s contemporary music ensemble, under the direction of Sarah Brady. This event is part of Lei Liang’s residency, generously supported by Berklee Trustee and Boston Conservatory Legacy Trustee Snow Qin.
