Composition in Asia 2nd International Symposium & Festival

Sponsored by the USF School of Music/College of The Arts, USF World, USF Research & Innovation, and the College of Arts at Yunnan University, China

Keynote speakers Kyong Mee Choi, Associate Professor of Composition, Roosevelt University, Chicago Reena Esmail, composer in residence for L. A. Street Symphony, co-director of Shastra Pei Lu, Professor of Music, Composition Department, Shanghai Conservatory of Music

Composer, Research, and Lecture-Recital presentations by Payton MacDonald, Logan Barrett, Saili Oak, Ko Eun Lee, Kye Ryung Park,

Chen-Hui Jen, Guohui Ye (by Yu Ye), Charisse Baldoria, Yoon-yung Cho, Eunhye Kim, Jumi Kim & E. J. Choe, Huibing Yang, Hongduo Chen, Kenneth Habib, Junghwa Lee,

Craig B. Parker, Serin Oh, Jacob David Sudol, John O. Robison, Akshaya Avril Tucker, TingTing Yang

Program Committee Kyong Mee Choi, Associate Professor of Composition, Roosevelt University Craig B. Parker, Associate Professor of Musicology, Kansas State University

Hui Yu, Distinguished Professor of Ethnomusicology and Dean, College of Arts, Yunnan University Ya-Hui Cheng, Assistant Professor of Music Theory, University of South Florida

Baljinder Sekhon, Assistant Professor of Composition, University of South Florida John O. Robison, Professor of Musicology, University of South Florida

January 18-21, 2018 USF School of Music Barness Recital Hall

Thursday, January 18th(afternoon/evening)

3:15 PM Dr. Payton MacDonald, professor of music, William Paterson University New Directions in Dhrupad: Polyphonic Raga

I propose a lecture demonstration about Polyphonic Raga, which is generally considered to be anathema to the Raga system. Yet, with a thorough training in both Western music and Raga music it can be achieved. I’ve drawn inspiration from my Dhrupad vocal Gurus, the great Gundecha Brothers, who frequently overlap their phrases, thus creating a brief “harmonization.” I’ve also drawn inspiration from my work with La Monte Young and his ongoing experiments with polyphony within the Kirana style of Khyal singing, as well as composer/pianist Michael Harrison. After a brief discussion of the aforementioned musicians and their experiments, I will discuss my own work, and then perform an example

of it (in Raag Malkauns). In my own work I am developing three strata of polyphony: (1) The lead vocal line, (2) the secondary vocal line, typically working in parallel, oblique, or contrary motion to the lead line, or heterophony, and (3) the static notes, which are long-held notes of the given raga being performed, which provide points of pitch centricity beyond the tanpura drone, thus augmenting the harmonic possibilities and offering different shades of the drone. My performance will involve using pre-recorded clips in combination with my live voice. What is significant about what I am doing is that I am applying Western concepts of polyphony to the raga system without destroying the aesthetic essence of a given raag. My concern with all of my intercultural work is that I create new music that respects the given traditions, without diluting them or destroying what makes them special. Payton MacDonald is an Associate Professor of Music at William Paterson University who is a composer, improviser, percussionist, singer, and educator. He has created a unique body of work that draws upon his extensive experience with East Indian tabla drumming, Dhrupad singing, Jazz, European classical music, and the American experimental tradition. Dr. MacDonald studied music at the University of Michigan and the Eastman School of Music. His composition teachers include Sydney Hodkinson, Robert Morris, Dave Rivello, Bright Sheng, and Augusta Read Thomas. Dr. MacDonald has toured the world with Alarm Will Sound and performed many improvised concerts with artists such as Elliott Sharp, Aakash Mittal, and Tim Feeney. His percussion teachers include John Beck and Michael Udow; further studies include tabla with Bob Becker and Pandit Sharda Sahai, and Dhrupad vocal with Ramakant Gundecha. The New York Times described him as an "energetic soloist" and The Los Angeles Times described him as an "inventive, stylistically omnivorous composer and gifted performer." 4:00 PM Logan Barrett, composition student, University of South Florida Use of Rhythm in Western and Hindustani Composition

As a young composer in the digital age, my musical influences have been widely varied as a result of being presented so many different types of content through the internet, often at my own choice. As a result, I often feel that I do not have a musical background that is contained to one culture or school of thought. This is very different from much of the rest of history. In my presentation, I will present my recent experience writing my Pocket Concerto for tabla and percussion quartet at the Shastra Summer Symposium, and discuss some of my other compositional work and my thoughts on Western composition in a larger compositional context. An important aspect of rhythmic construction that I have looked into is the different uses of

additive and divisive rhythm. In musical practice, the east and the west use both of these, but in different ways. In Western music, rhythm traditionally is thought of as predominantly divisive. More modern composers have implemented rhythm in a more linear, rather than hierarchical way, where techniques such as additive structures, mathematical structures or text setting are used to create an alternate musical grammar. Hindustani music comes from a different perspective; metrical hierarchy is present, but the rhythmic surface is highly varied and individual gestures in techniques like tihai often serve as the primary means of producing musical material. This distinction, however, is not as simple as this, since cyclical nature of the taal structure is such an integral part of the Hindustani musical paradigm. Therefore, the construction of the music into a cyclical structure has a minor role in the music itself, and the production of material is the more interesting part. I also will share some of my recent compositional work and research into Fibonacci numbers, the properties of a mathematical construct called the Wythoff array, the various number sequences that can be derived from it, and its relationship to the various aspects of rhythm previously discussed. My more recent research into modular residue

cycles will also be discussed. Finally, I will contextualize my work culturally in how it relates to musical tradition and I will reflect on my own observations of how different cultures make music. In writing this piece, I discovered how essential Western art music has been in the development of my rhythmic palette. I found that engaging with the concept of cyclicity pushed my limits compositionally and that my ears largely informed my sense of overall form. In the cultural sense, my approach to the piece came largely from a western point of view. Logan Barrett is a composer and pianist currently based in Tampa, Florida. His compositions include works for chamber ensemble, solo instruments, and electroacoustic media. His compositional interests include the implementation of mathematical concepts from number theory into musical narratives and the role of the acoustical and semantic properties of speech in communication and their potential in music. He was featured as the junior composer-in-residence at the New Music Conflagration’s 2017 Florida International Toy Piano Festival located in Saint Petersburg, Florida. He recently participated in summer festivals including the Longy school of Music’s Divergent Studio and the Shastra Summer Symposium. As an active advocate of new music, Logan serves as part of the technical team of the New-Music Consortium at University of South Florida and has premiered and performed many works as a pianist. Logan is currently pursuing bachelor's degrees in music composition and philosophy studying composition with professors Baljinder Sekhon and Paul Reller at the USF School of Music. He has participated in additional study with composers including Louis Andriessen, Robert Morris, Amy Beth Kirsten, Kate Soper, Matt Barber, John Liberatore, Aaron Helgeson, and Marcos Balter.

4:45 PM Saili Oak, Hindustani vocalist and Dean, SaReGaMaPa Academy of Music Western art music from the Hindustani lens: A Journey into Collaborative Practices from the Indian Perspective

My presentation explores best practices and strategies for collaboration between Hindustani and Western art music from the Hindustani perspective. As a vocalist trained in the Hindustani tradition of Indian Classical Music, I began my journey towards collaboration from the opposite direction and thus see this work through a very different lens. I have been exploring the collaborative space between the two classical traditions since relocating to the

U. S., working with composers and performing their pieces with orchestras and in chamber music settings. As the Programs Manager at Shastra, I co-teach a yearly summer intensive workshop with Reena Esmail, which delves into the fundamentals of Hindustani music, and teaches Western composers to write for and work with Indian musicians. The composers come into this workshop with no prior knowledge of Indian musical tradition, and gain the skill set to be able to arrange a Hindustani bhajan (a devotional composition) for Hindustani singer and string quartet. The workshop culminates in a live recording where I perform these bhajan arrangements with string quartet.The biggest challenge I believe, is the difference in approach towards the treatment of a composition in the two music traditions. Hindustani musicians train themselves to pull away from the composed and notated music and explore the creative space where they improvise using their technical skills. Working with Western musicians was initially a challenge, which I have overcome through Western theory lessons, and I strive to combine these amazing music traditions to create a beautiful blend of these unique sounds and textures. I look forward to sharing best practices for Western composers and performers who want to begin or delve deeper into collaborations with Hindustani musicians. Saili Oak is a senior disciple of Dr. Ashwini Bhide Deshpande, a leading vocalist of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana. She began her music studies at age 3, holds a BM degree in Hindustani vocal music and an MA in commerce, and is the founding Dean of the SaReGaMaPa Academy of Music. She won the All India Classical Music Competition at the age of 17, and regularly performs with All India Radio. Since moving to the U. S. she has regularly conducted music lessons, workshops, and lecture demonstrations, as well as making numerous appearances at music festivals (Vedic Heritage in New York, Beyond Borders at the University of Maine, Summer Sounds Festival in Los Angeles, etc.). She has also performed with the Albany Symphony, and is the first Hindustani singer to perform with an orchestra. She has been praised for her meticulous architecture of khayal, her systematic and well-crafted raga exploration and laudable command over the laya, and has recently recorded tracks for Trevor Hall’s album Kala.

Thursday, January 18, 7:30 PM: Concert 1 Featuring Music by Payton MacDonald, Young-Jo Lee,

Kye Ryung Park, Kenneth Habib, and Zhanhao He Performers: Jumi Kim (soprano), E. J. Choe (piano), Craig B. Parker (trumpet),

Payton MacDonald (voice), Enrico Elisi (piano), Dana Milan (piano). Qinhan Jin (pipa)

Friday, January 19 (morning) 8:45 AM Ko Eun Lee, piano faculty/accompanist, Brevard College & Mars Hill University David Burge’s Go-Hyang: Blending Contemporary and Korean Traditional Music

The reputation of American pianist David Burge (1930-2013) flourished through a long career of performing contemporary music. He premiered major works by such prominent composers as Luciano Berio, George Crumb, Karl Heinz Stockhausen, and others with whom he had close musical interactions. Burge’s later compositions, written after 1984, integrate his interest in foreign cultures and languages with his promotion of contemporary music. One of these works, Go-Hyang (1994), reflects Korean musical and cultural references through the prism of contemporary Western techniques. Burge’s relationship with Korea began as a soldier during the Korean War (1950-1953). He composed this piece, the only published piano solo work of his late period, after revisiting the country as a guest

lecturer in 1993. Go-Hyang contains six movements to be performed as a single work without pause. Aspects to be discussed include extended piano techniques, a consonant post-tonal harmonic language, elements of Korean traditional music (pentatonic scales, folk tunes, instruments), along with the landscape, language, and religion of Korea. Following the discussion Go-Hyang will be performed in its entirety. Ko Eun (Grace) Lee, a native of South Korea, holds a DMA in piano and a post-MM Certificate in music theory pedagogy from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a Graduate Artist Certificate in piano from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and an MM degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Dr. Lee also graduated summa cum laude from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville with the BM degree in piano and piano pedagogy, and was named the outstanding senior graduate in piano. She was a winner of the 2005 Tennessee Music Teachers Association's Steinway Young Artist Competition, as well as the UT Celebration of Excellence Competitions 2005, 2006, 2007) and the 2006 UT Concerto Competition. Her lecture-recital on “The Synthesis of Korean Traditional Music and Serialism in Isang Yun’s Fünf Stücke für Klavier” was well-received at the International Conference of the College Music Society held in South Korea (2011). Dr.Lee has performed in master classes numerous well-known pianists, including Kevin Kenner, Boaz Sharon, William Westney, Simone Dinnerstein, Jacques Després, Pascal Rogé, Jeremy Denk, André Watts, and Byron Janis. She is currently on the piano faculties at Brevard College, Mars Hill University, and the Academy for the Arts at First Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, where she also serves as music director at Oakley United Methodist Church.

9:30 AM Kye Ryung Park, music professor, New College of Florida [with pianist Enrico Elisi] An Analysis of my Prelude to a New Moon

Originally from South Korea, I have been living in the U. S. for the past 19 years. While I received my training as a composer from both Korea and the U. S., I did not have the opportunity or interest in learning Korean music until I did my graduate work at the University of California in Los Angeles. There I was able to take gayageum lessons, and since that time my interest in incorporating some Korean elements into my compositions has grown significantly. This lecture-recital will focus on my piano work Prelude to a New Moon (2016), which was commissioned by my Korean pianist friend Hyunjung Rachael Chung and reflects our friendship as well as our shared heritage. As in traditional Korean

Sanjo, some sections are left to the performer for improvisation, and some sections utilize sounds derived from the 12-string gayageum zither (accomplished by plucking the strings inside of the piano). The presentation will conclude with a live performance by world-renowned pianist Enrico Elisi. As a resident of both Asia and the United States, composer Kye Ryung Park has successfully integrated a number of multi-cultural elements into her own artistic identity. She is an accomplished pianist as well as an active gayageum player, and studied with Byung-Dong Paik at Seoul National University before emigrating to the United States for mer MM and PhD work at the University of California in Los Angeles. Her compositions have been performed at numerous music festivals and conferences including the International Festival of Women Composers, Nevada Encounters of New Music, the Pan Music Festival, June in Buffalo, the College Music Society national and international conferences, and international festivals in Italy. Dr. Park’s music has been published in both the United States and Asia. She is currently on the music faculty at New College in Sarasota, Florida.

10:30 AM Chen-Hui Jen, composer/pianist, Miami Integrating the Chinese Mandarin Language and Poetic Meanings in my Vocal Music

In this talk, I will present my approaches to integrating poetry in my vocal music. The primary language I apply in my music is Chinese Mandarin from the Taiwan region, which is my mother tongue. This language also reflects my sense of intonation and phrasing. It has been always a challenge to combine Mandarin with Western-influenced music, especially when texts are included. The fundamentally different sounds and syntax of Mandarin do not naturally accord with Western-influenced music. In order to find a more successful way of texts in Mandarin, I have carefully studied how previous composers have set poetry into music in various ways, such as the musicality of symbolic poems; sounds in languages; timbres of phonemes and voices; as well as the musical interpretation of texts. This research therefore provided me an insight into

vocal music that transcends songs and basic expressions and has deeply informed how I set my mother tongue in my own works. I will first discuss Twilight as a drifting islet (2013) for mixed chorus in two groups. As in many of my vocal works, I wrote a poem for the piece as the work’s lyrics. The poem is parallel in both Chinese and English but sung in Chinese. The other piece I will present is in between emptiness (2016) for male chorus. In contrast with the Twilight as a drifting islet, this work’s commission required I use a text written by the ensemble's contracted writer. This work was part of the ensemble's large project "Oriental Prayers" series in which all the individual works include a quote from Buddhist scriptures. I will also likely cite some of my other works as to demonstrate how I have used and developed similar approaches for different musical and poetic contexts to provide a greater context for my work combining Chinese Mandarin and poetic meanings in my vocal works. Chen-Hui Jen is a Taiwanese-born composer who writes music for orchestra, instrumental and vocal ensemble, solo, and electronics. She eared her Ph.D. degree in music at the University of California, San Diego. Having developed a deep sustained interest in literature, primarily Chinese poetry, since early age and studied poetry in both classical and modern forms, Chen-Hui Jen's approach towards writing music has many similarities to her approach towards writing poems – that is, to create an artistic work that reflects refined thoughts and voices, and to build an integrated connection between oneself and the work itself. 11:15 AM Guohui Ye, Professor and Composition Chair, Shanghai Conservatory of Music A Chinese Painting’s Story in my Musical Composition [presented by Yu Ye, PhD candidate in musicology, University of Texas-Austin]

In A.D. 964, the last emperor of Southern Tang Kingdom Li Yu was dissatisfied with one of his officials Han Xizai who indulged in nightlife everyday, but he didn’t want to express his anger directly. Instead, the emperor sent a court painter to the house of Han Xizai, and ordered him to depict what he really saw. After the painted scroll Night Revels of Han Xizai was finished and presented to Han Xizai as a gift, Han Xizai felt very ashamed when seeing the painting. The action of the emperor Li Yu was well-intentioned, hoping Han Xizai would correct his own

behavior. The painted scroll is split into five distinct sections: Listening to the pipa, watching dancers, taking rest, playing the wind instruments, and seeing the guests off. The painting lively narrates the scenes of life in China over one thousand years ago. While the music of the Tang Court was lost in China, it was spread to Japan at that time and preserved into four different sources, all of which are very similar. In 2013, Chinese composer Guohui Ye found Japanese Gagaku through the internet, including ten performances of The Wine-Puppet, and compared his own research with the findings of scholar Laurence Picken. Dr. Ye concluded that the Gagaku music from the four aforementioned sources share the same origin, and that the music of the Tang Court was not lost. Living through its existence in Japanese Gagaku for more than a thousand years, The Wine-Puppet possesses the characteristics of the “lost” music of the Tang Court. Guohui Ye is the chair of the composition department at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He studied in Darmstadt, as a visiting scholar at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Hungary, and became the first person in China to do intensive research on composer György Kurtag for his doctoral dissertation. He has received numerous prizes and awards for his orchestral music for such competitions as The Fourth Composition Competition of the Taiwan Provincial Orchestra, the Awards of Symphonic Works for the Return of Hong Kong, The Tenth Nationwide Musical Symphonic Works Awards, and the CCA Taiwan International Composition Competition.

Within Europe, his Late Autumn for Orchestra won the 2007 European Composer Award, and he was commissioned to write Echo for the Young Euro Classic Festival in 2008. His music exhibits a characteristic perception of sounds and their attributes, reflecting the consideration and integration of such factors as the nature of music itself, spatial effects. Chinese musical elements, and modern techniques. Presenting on behalf of Dr. Ye is Yu Ye, who is one of his former students and currently a PhD candidate in musicology at the University of Texas in Austin.

Lunch Break (12:00-1:15 PM)

Friday, January 19 (afternoon/evening) 1:15 PM Charisse Baldoria, piano professor, Bloomsburg University

Gamelan on Piano: Leopold Godowsky’s Java Suite

In 1923, composer and virtuoso pianist Leopold Godowsky went on a concert tour of Java, Indonesia which gave him seminal ideas to compose his monumental Java Suite (1924-1925), a set of 12 pieces for piano. Reminiscent of Albéniz’ Iberia and Liszt’s Années des Pèlerinage, Godowsky called them "phonoramas" or "tonal journeys," representing his own physical and psychological journeys in the island that captivated him with its ancient culture and structures, luxuriant tropical landscapes, and “docile people.” Sorabji, an ardent admirer of Godowsky, declared the suite “among the masterpieces of modern piano music.” Though Godowsky is known for his technically demanding and inventive transcriptions of the Chopin etudes and

other pieces, he shows himself an accomplished composer of original works. More than an exotic musical postcard collection, Java Suite showcases his mature style and draws on the virtuoso writing and inventiveness of his well-known compositions, as well as on contemporary idioms and the experimentation inspired by this new musical culture and environment. Intersections among Javanese influences, Romantic piano technique, widespread chromaticism, and Impressionist allusions permeate the suite, spiced with Godowsky's own verbal expressions of the exotic and the sublime. The Javanese pentatonic scales, stratified texture, and rhythmic patterns are stylized into unusual harmonies, polyrhythms, double notes, and polyphonic layers that create highly complex musical and virtuosic challenges. Fragments of two Javanese melodies were also used. Both chromatic and pentatonic elements are reminiscent of Impressionism, as are the glimmering passages. Documentary evidence and archival papers will be also examined to hopefully address the lacunae of information on his trip to Java and the other Asian countries that were part of that tour. The performance portion will include Gamelan, the first piece in the suite; Boro Budur in Moonlight, an eerie portrayal of the ancient temple; In the Kraton, inspired by the kraton (sultan’s palace) at the ancient cities of Yogyakarta and Solo; and The Ruined Water Castle at Djokja, a depiction of an 18th-century bathing complex and royal gardens ruined by wars and the 1857 earthquake. Charisse Baldoria is currently an associate professor of piano at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the piano area. After graduating summa cum laude from the University of the Philippines, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study with pianist Logan Skelton at the University of Michigan, where she did her MM and DMA degrees. Praised by the Philippine Star as “formidable,” with “intelligent pianism at its best,” Dr. Baldoria is an international prizewinning Filipino pianist, pedagogue, and scholar whose repertoire ranges from the traditional classics to Hispanic and Southeast Asian music, one who also incorporates dance, poetry, and the visual arts into some of her concerts. She has performed in five continents, and won prizes and awards in a number of international and national competitions. In her recent programs and research she negotiates with her Filipino identity, juxtaposing the indigenous with the colonial, performing music from and inspired by Southeast Asia and Spain, of which the Philippines was a colony for 333 years. Dr. Baldoria’s numerous piano recitals include appearances at the International Festival of Spanish Keyboard Music (FIMTE) in Spain, a series of concerts and lectures sponsored by Spain's Ministry of Culture and the Instituto Cervantes, and concerts in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has also given presentations at the College Music Society (CMS) International Conferences in Spain, Argentina, and Australia.

2:00 PM Yoon-young Cho, PhD student, Ewha Womans University Women’s Songs from a Male Perspective: Focusing on Twentieth-Century Young Women’s Songs by Woo-yong Baek

This paper is a study of Twentieth-Century Young Women’s Songs (1921), a collection of songs composed and edited by Baek Woo-yong (1883-1930), a male Korean composer and performer who was active in Korea’s colonial period under Japanese rule (1910-1945). Unlike other songbooks published in the same milieu, Twentieth-Century Young Women’s Songs was intended explicitly for women, as indicated in the title. In this paper, I demonstrate that this book conveyed images of ideal womanhood that were proposed in the broader modernization movement led by Korean male intellectuals in a time of social transition. Firstly, I contend that

images of women in this book were continuous with those in the broader “women’s enlightenment movement,” which was led by male Korean intellectuals. I examine the central tenets of this movement by looking at major publications printed under the leadership of these intellectuals, such as Family Magazine (1906) and Independent Newspaper (1896-1899). These publications, inspired by a misguided perception of “Western societies,” made a naïve and ultimately impractical argument that women’s social participation and education naturally led to a powerful and prosperous nation. Secondly, through an analysis of the lyrics and music of the 42 songs in Twentieth-Century Young Women’s Songs, I illustrate the categorization of women into three prototypes in this book: “good wife and wise mother at home,” “Confucian women in traditional society,” and “enlightened women who embody modernization.” These prototypes projected the bifurcated notions of “modern” women and “traditional” women. Third, I show that Twentieth Century Young Women’s Songs represented what male Korean intellectuals aspired to, rather what was practically possible for Korean women in general. For instance, the book was most likely used in weekend or night schools, outside the institution of regular schools; furthermore, it would have been very challenging for most Korean women at this time to sing melodies in Western music style. Therefore, I conclude that Twentieth-Century Young Women’s Songs participated in the ultimately impractical and male-centered movement of “women’s enlightenment,” rather than empowering the lives on Korean women. Yoon-young Cho is a PhD candidate in musicology at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. Her publications include “Women Songs Made by a Male Perspective: Focusing on Twentieth Century Youth Women Songs by Baek Woo-yong” (2015), “A Study on the JoongAng AkWooHoi, a Music Group in Colonial Chosun” (2016) and "Why the Musicians of Chosun under Japanese Colonial Rule sought to establish Orchestra: The Emergence and Meaning of Kyungseong Broadcasting (JODK) Orchestra" (2017). She is currently a lecturer at Hoseo University. 3:00 PM Featured Composer Presentation: Reena Esmail

Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces. Esmail holds degrees in composition from The Juilliard School (BM’05) and the Yale School of Music (MM’11, MMA’14, DMA’18). In recent seasons, Esmail has worked with the Kronos Quartet, Albany Symphony, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, Salastina Music Society, SOLI, and American Composers Orchestra. Her work is performed regularly throughout the US and abroad, and has been programmed at

Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre in London, Schloss Esterhazy in Hungary, and throughout India. She has served as Composer in Residence for Albany Symphony (2016-17), Street Symphony (2016-present) in downtown Los Angeles, Concerts on the Slope (2015-16) in Brooklyn, NY and the Pasadena Master Chorale (2014-16) in Pasadena, CA. Esmail received a 2011-12 Fulbright-Nehru to study Hindustani music in India, where she was also a 2011 INK Fellow (in association with TED). In 2010, Esmail co-founded Yale’s Hindi a cappella group, Sur et Veritaal. Esmail’s doctoral thesis, entitled Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians explores the methods and challenges of the collaborative process between Hindustani musicians and Western composers. Her teachers include Srimati Lakshmi Shankar and Saili Oak. Recent commissions include: I Rise: Women in Song, for Lehigh University’s women’s chorus and orchestra, a Clarinet Concerto for Hindustani/Western crossover clarinetist Shankar Tucker and the Albany Symphony Orchestra (where she was the 2016-17 Composer Fellow), The Light is the Same for Imani Winds, and a new major sacred work, This Love Between Us for chorus, orchestra, sitar and tabla, written for the Yale Schola Cantorum and Juilliard 415 which toured India in March 2017. This season’s highlights include new works for the Chicago

Sinfonietta, Albany Symphony, and violinist Vijay Gupta. In addition, Esmail is the Co-Artistic Director of Shastra, a non-profit organization that promotes cross-cultural music that connects the great musical traditions of India and the West. She is also the Composer-in-Residence with Street Symphony, where she works with communities experiencing homelessness and incarceration in Los Angeles. 4:00 PM Eunhye Kim, theory/composition faculty, Kyunghee University Efforts to find a way (Conversion) in Junyoung Park’s Duo for piano & bass drum

Junyoung Park (b. 1967) has been a faculty member of the Kyunghee University School of Music since 2007 and is now an associate professor in the department of composition. He currently serves as president of the Society of “Chang-ak”, vice president of Korean Composer’s Society, and an auditor of the Society of Asian Composers. His works have been performed in various cities in Europe, China as well as many other countries. He studied composition with Junggil Kim at Seoul National University (BM, 1990). Moving to Germany, he then received his advanced Diploma in Composition under Helmut Lachenmann’s supervision at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Stuttgart in 1999. Deeply influenced by

Lachenmann and other German composers, he was inspired by a role of art as a connection to society as shown in the European avant-garde art movement by Anton Webern through Luigi Nono. This freed him from anger, but the helplessness of beholding that art fell into a toy for powerful and rich people in Korea in those days. At this point, he became interested in Korean culture and philosophy and therefore started pursuing a change in his music. He suffered from confusion of his Korean identity in Europe and tried to solve the musical problem of a Korean composer such as Isang Yun, regarding how to use or quote traditional Korean music. He thought that Korean culture and philosophy was learned naturally and thus any additional cultural work was not necessary; therefore, most of his music naturally revealed Korean taste, as in his Duo for Piano and Bass- Drum. Written in Germany (1999) and having three movements, the first movement plays a “main theme” as the major role, which is then followed by a “response” to it in the second movement. The third movement plays the epilogue. The composition was motivated by two Korean traditional instruments, the gayageum and the kunbuk drum, and the rhythmic structure was taken from Morse code. Experimenting with Western instruments such as piano and drum reflects his effort to approach his musical identity as a Korean. The pianist has speech-function, while the bass drum performs breathing and speech based on English vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u). The vowel transfer to rhythm using the Morse code stems from the jangdan idea in Korean traditional rhythm. He tried to find his Korean identity by repeating or changing rhythm. After writing the Duo, Dr. Park took an interest in intuitive sound reception and relying upon romantic characteristics in his compositions, thus showing a penchant for continuous development as a composer. Eunhye Kim was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. She received MM in composition and theory from Ball State University (IN) in 2006, where she had been the teaching assistant and supervisor of the Music Technology Computer Lab. Prior to that she also received an MM degree in composition from Kyunghee University (2002) as a teaching assistant, and holds her BA degree from Kyunghee University (1998), where she had been the recipient of full fellowship. She is currently a PhD candidate in music theory there, while also teaching at Kyunghee University. Her principal composition teachers have included Hyun-Ok Kim, Jong-in Park, Donghee Woo, Eleanor Trawick, Jody Nagel, and Michael Pounds.

4:45 PM Jumi Kim, St. Francis Episcopal Church and Dr. Eun-Joung (E. J.) Choe, University of Indianapolis

Korean Art Songs in the German Tradition: A Korean Song Cycle Falling Flower Petals by Kyung-Jung Kim

Kyung-Jung Kim started composing inspired by vocal music, especially opera. He said he decided to be a composer after watching the opera Rigoletto, identifying Giuseppe Verdi as the composer who influenced him the most in vocal music composition. After finishing his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Kyung-Hee University in Korea, he went to Germany for further study at the Essen-Folkwang Hochschule. Kim has been actively composing art songs including a song cycle and an opera as well as instrumental music including music for ballet and percussion orchestra for various concerts. He has been a

composition professor at Kookmin University since 2001. Kyung-Jung Kim considers most Korean art songs to be very lyrical but relatively simple in harmonic structure compared to Western style. He believes this is the result of Korea’s relatively recent embracing of Western music with its rich harmonic progressions. He also said, “In Korean culture, music is more for performing and participating rather than watching and listening.” This cultural background creates songs that emphasize melodic lines that appeal to the audience while deemphasizing the balance between vocal lines and instrument accompaniment. In 2001, Kyung-Jung Kim composed a song cycle called (Falling Flower Petals) based on seventeen poems from the poetry book 사람의 마을에 꽃이 진다 (Flower petals are falling in a village) by Jong-Hwan Do. One of the first song cycles based on original Korean poems, he sought to incorporate the characteristics of German art songs. He states, “Thus, piano cannot be mere accompaniment, it should be considered equal in importance to the vocal melody. Also, the ‘vertical dimension’ of the harmonic structure should be considered a significant characteristic.” This lecture recital will provide samples of Kyung-Jung Kim’s art songs from his song cycle, comparing them to songs by German composers and his contemporaries while demonstrating his advancement of Korean art songs using the characteristics of German lieder. Jumi Kim is currently the music director at St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Novato, California, and holds a DA in voice from Ball State University, an MM from Indiana University, and a BM from Ewha Woman’s University. Dr. Kim has taught voice at Cuesta College in California, Indiana Wesleyan University, and at Indiana University-Purdue University in Fort Wayne. Her lecture-recital experiences have included presentations at the 2008 College Music Society National Conference in Atlanta, and at the 2011 CMS International Conference in South Korea. Her recent performances include Bach Cantata BWV 51 and the Bach Magnificat with the Symphony of the Vines in California; she was also a guest artist at the 50th Anniversary of the MLK Jr. Symphony of Brotherhood Concert in Los Angeles. Dr. Kim’s various operatic roles include Suzel in Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz, Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the Countess in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto, and Cio-Cio San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Eun-Joung (E. J.) Choe, a native of Seoul, made her televised debut as a pianist for the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) at age six. After coming to the U.S. at age thirteen, she won numerous competitions and appeared as guest soloist with the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra, Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra, and Arvada Symphony Orchestra. She received a BM and MM from the University of Colorado (Boulder) and her DM in Piano Pedagogy and Literature from Indiana University. In addition to her career as a pianist, E.J. served as a vocal/opera coach at the Aspen Summer Festival, the Indiana University Opera Theatre, DePauw University, and the Studi Italiani in Urbania, Italy. E.J.’s research in improving pedagogy with technology have been supported by Apple (iPads), Yamaha (Disklavier), and a research grant from the National Research Foundation in the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. Prior to joining University of Indianapolis as Associate Adjunct Professor of Music in 2017, she served as a Coordinator of Keyboard at University of Colorado-Denver, Director of the IUPUI Music Academy, and Director for Accreditation at New Mexico Highlands University.

Friday, January 19, 7:30 PM: Concert 2 Featuring music by Kyung-Jung Kim, Gareth Farr, Eunhye Kim,

and Korean traditional gayageum sanjo Performers: Charisse Baldoria (piano), Jumi Kim (soprano),

E. J. Choe (piano), and Junghwa Lee (gayageum)

Saturday, January 20th (morning) 8:45 AM Huibing Yang, graduate student, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing An Analysis of The Oriental Ink by Ping Chang

This paper will present an introduction and analysis of The Oriental Ink by Chinese composer Ping Chang, which was performed in “Longsheng Huayun”, the special concert of the composer Changping in the National Center for the Performing Arts on June 19, 2015. The divertimento is composed of four concertos, and it gathers four instruments with the most representativeness in Chinese musical instruments —— Chinese zither, erhu, bamboo flute and pipa. The composer

produced one concerto for every instrument, and regards these four works as a huge oriental ink, which are The Wind Washed Clouds (Concerto for Chinese zither and orchestra, 2005), The Noble Fragrance (Concerto for erhu and orchestra, 2012), Blue Lotus (Concerto for Chinese bamboo flute and orchestra, (2014), and The Movement of Wash Painting (Concerto for pipa and orchestra, 2015). Ping Chang offered this description of this monumental work: “Concertos are the performance with the highest specification in scale, music control, emotional grasping and technical performance as to the four solo instruments. It is the best creative method to the exploration, development and breaking through of instrument. Every piece of ethical instrument has bright and unique personality, and they integrate with symphony concerto to become a unique form. It adds unique music vocabulary in the east taking western symphony as the carrier. They can crash gorgeous spark, and it is helpful to output Chinese culture to the world.” Yang Huibing is a full time MM student in the composition department of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China. She is majoring in orchestration under the guidance of associate professor Chang Ping, and the recipient of numerous academic scholarships. She was a participant in the 5th Forum for music analysis at the Central Conservatory of Music and also at the Beijing International Composition Workshop in July 2016. She is dedicated to research 20th and 21st century instruments and orchestration technology, including such topics as an orchestration analysis of York Höller, minimalism and the music of John Adams, and research on Esa-Pekka Salonen’s violin concerto (published in Yue Fu Xin Sheng). As a composer, her works include Memory and Times for orchestra, The Sunset of the Desert I for piano and cello, and The Sunset of the Desert II for guqin solo.

9:30 AM Hongduo Chen, musicology professor, Shanghai Conservatory of Music Analysis of Bidirectional Rhetoric of Chinese and

Western Elements in A Dream of the Peony Garden

Chen Musheng is a leading figure among China's new generation of composers. His symphonic poem "A Dream in the Peony Garden" combines the essence of traditional Chinese art ("yunbai" of Kun opera) with the form of traditional Western music (orchestral music). The unique appeal of this outstanding kind of "Chinese-Western combination, while at the same time retaining their respective charms" was warmly welcomed. This paper analyzes how the composer facilitates the mutual influence between the Kun opera's "yunbai" and the orchestral music form. Taking the stance from a musical rhetoric point of view, the paper proposes that the process of influence is actually a bidirectional rhetoric process. The result of this rhetoric is a "symphonication of Kun opera's yunbai" and an "yunbai-ization of the orchestral music sound". This paper is divided into the following

parts: In the introduction part I will give a brief review of orchestral compositions by Chinese composers. The remaining three parts will discuss how Chen Musheng deals with the orchestra in "A Dream in the Peony Garden"; further I will analyze the bidirectional rhetoric in this work; and last I will expound on how the composer tells his own Chinese story in his piece. Chen Hongduo (1957- ), doctor of musicology, is now professor and head of music analysis group of the musicology department of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (SHCM). Chen studied music at Nanjing Normal University (1978-1982) and SHCM (2001-2005), and as a visiting scholar, he also studied music theory and analysis in the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Wien, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin in Germany and has done some research work at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland. Chen has written on many topics in music journals. He is the author of A Research of Ligeti’s Structural Thinking, and translated Nicholas Cook’s A Guide to Musical Analysis from English into Chinese. 10:30 AM Featured composer presentation: Kyong Mee Choi

Kyong Mee Choi, composer, organist, painter, and visual artist, received several prestigious awards and grants including John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Robert Helps Prize, Aaron Copland Award, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, First prize of ASCAP/SEAMUS Award, Second prize at VI Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo, Honorary Mentions from Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges, Musica Nova, Society of Electroacoustic Music of Czech Republic, Luigi Russolo International Competition, and Destellos Competition. She was a

Finalist of the Contest for the International Contemporary Music Contest "Citta' di Udine and Concurso Internacional de Composicai eletroacoustica in Brazil among others. Her music was published at CIMESP (São Paulo, Brazil), SCI, EMS, ERM media, SEAMUS, and Détonants Voyages (Studio Forum, France). Ravello records published her multimedia opera, THE ETERNAL TAO, which was supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and Roosevelt University. Aucourant Records published her CD, SORI, featuring her eight compositions for solo instrument and electronics. The project was supported by the IAS Artist Project Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. She is the Head of Music Composition and an Associate Professor of Music Composition at Roosevelt University in Chicago where she teaches composition and electro-acoustic music. Samples of her works are available at http://www.kyongmeechoi.com. 11:30 AM Kenneth Habib, ethnomusicology professor, California Polytechnic State University Arab Art Music in American Art Song

The inspirations of my Lebanese-American heritage and my training in Euro-American and Eastern Arab art and popular music combine in much of the music I compose. This presentation focuses on two of my pieces of contemporary American art song for soprano and piano to show their connection to three of my instrumental pieces of traditional Eastern Arab art music. The selections of original Eastern Arab art music are “Dulāb Ḥijāz,” “Samā‘ī Ḥijāz,” and “Something Shahnāz.” They are extracted from structurally important positions in a waṣla, the compound or suite form that is the main mode of delivery in traditional Eastern Arab art music. Tying together the compositions and improvisations that comprise a given waṣla is the particular maqām or melodic mode in use, which in this case

is maqām ḥijāz. Among the characteristics distinguishing this maqām is an underlying scale that definitively features the ḥijāz tetrachord of D, E-flat, F-sharp, G. Traditional Eastern Arab art music also involves an īqā‘ or metric modal system that governs the progression of time, and in this case, the metric modes unfold symmetrically across the constituent pieces of the waṣla. The selections of original American art song are “spring came in winter” and “as is the sea marvelous.” The first is from Freedom Songs, my eight-song cycle with original poetry, and the second is from Poems of E. E. Cummings, my eight-song cycle with texts by the celebrated American poet. The borrowing of elements from one tradition and mapping them onto the other includes formative use of transpositions of the ḥijāz tetrachord in the voice and piano of both songs. It also includes symmetrical use of rhythm within the waṣla and song cycles. An example is the samā‘ī genre, which functions as the centerpiece of the waṣla and features a symmetrically constructed metric mode of 3+2+2+3 beats. These examples provide a glimpse into the musical hybridity of the individual songs and larger cycles. Kenneth Habib is a professor of ethnomusicology at California Polytechnic State University, and has also been the associate director of the Middlebury College Arabic School, has taught music at Pomona College and the University of California Santa Barbara, and has taught Arabic at Cuesta College and Santa Barbara City College. He holds his PhD degree in ethnomusicology from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and specializes in both Middle Eastern and American popular music in addition to also being active as a composer and performer. In addition to his articles in the Grove Dictionary of American Music on Bob Dylan and other American popular artists, one of his areas of expertise is the iconic Lebanese singer Fairuz, who in collaboration with the Rahbani family of composer-poets has been a preeminent force in Arab art and popular music for six decades.

Lunch Break (12:15-1:15 PM)

Saturday, January 20th (afternoon/evening) 1:30 PM Junghwa Lee, gayageum virtuoso, Los Angeles Korean Traditional Styles in the Music of Kim Eunhye

Eunhye Kim is a renowned South Korean composer who appeared as a keynote speaker at the inaugural Composition in Asia Symposium and Festival held from January 22-25, 2015. Her compositions have been performed internationally — including a performance at the University of South Florida one year ago on January 22, 2017. Dr. Kim is well-known as a composer who writes in various genres and styles ranging from instrumental ensembles to operas, while also integrating traditional Korean musical styles into her compositions. She

incorporates Korean traditions by using familiar tunes from Korean folk songs or children’s songs, acquiring inspiration from Korean myths or ideology, and using Korean rhythmic patterns along with Nong-Hyun (a traditional Korean vibration technique). This lecture recital will focus on the last of these approaches and include music for gayageum, the traditional Korean 12-string zither. It will also provide music examples from Cadenza I for gayageum solo and Gayageum for soprano, gayageum, and janggu. Gayageum has been selected particularly for its unique combination of instruments with voice, and the ways in which it captures the essence of Jee-Hoon Cho’s poem entitled “Gayageum.” This lecture recital will compare these music examples to traditional Korean music styles and also discuss issues relating to performance practice. Junghwa Lee is described as a gayageum musician with rich emotions and flawless techniques. Born in Seoul, she earned her BM and MM degrees in Korean traditional music at Hanyang University. Her talents were recognized at an early age when she became the first prize winner in the Nangye Traditional Korean Music Contest, the Dong-A Traditional Korean Music Contest, and the Korean National Traditional Music Competition. While living in Seoul, she was a member of the Kyounggi Korean Music Orchestra, a soloist in Japan for the Korea-Japan Cultural Exchange Joint Concert, a soloist for the Hanyang Traditional Music Festival, and performer during the opening concert of Yeak-dang concert hall at the National Gugak Center. In 2002 Ms. Lee moved to the United States, and currently lives in Los Angeles. Within the U. S. she has performed in six states (Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, New York, and Ohio), appeared as the soloist with the Wright State University Orchestra in a modern concerto for gayageum and orchestra, and focuses on promoting an appreciation for Korean Traditional Music.

2:15 Craig B. Parker, musicology professor, Kansas State University Japanese Elements in the Compositions of Alan Hovhaness

Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) ranks among the most prolific American composers, having written 434 opus numbers, including 67 symphonies. His best known compositions include Symphony No. 2 (“Mysterious Mountain”), And God Created Great Whales (which incorporates taped whale sounds into an orchestral fabric), and Prayer of St. Gregory (which has been recorded over 30 times.) His unique style incorporates the modal sounds of Armenian music, Renaissance-like polyphony, and various Asian musics. Hovhaness became interested in Asian music during the 1930s. This fascination grew during 1959-60, when he lived in India and studied Karnatic music. Hovhaness studied Japanese court music (gagaku) as well as other traditional Japanese music on a 1962 Rockefeller grant. Prior to this residency, Hovhaness had composed Japanese-oriented works, such as Koke no niwa (1954). While in Japan, Hovhaness composed The Burning House, an opera influenced by Noh theatre. During the ensuing decade, Hovhaness wrote

numerous other Japanese-influenced compositions, most notably Fantasy on Japanese Woodprints for xylophone and orchestra (1964). Hovhaness learned to play many traditional Japanese instruments (such as the hichiriki, ryuteki, shamisen, and sho) and often combined them with Western instruments in his compositions. This paper surveys Hovhaness’s works with Japanese elements, from Koke no niwa (1954) through his late works composed for his last wife, coloratura Hinako Fujihara. This lecture will be enhanced with excerpts from documentaries on the composer. Much of the data in this paper was derived from documents in the Hovhaness Collection at the Armenian Cultural Foundation Archives in Arlington, Massachusetts. Craig B. Parker is Associate Professor of Music at Kansas State University, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate music history courses and plays trumpet with the KSU Faculty Brass Quintet. He earned his B.M. in trumpet performance at the University of Georgia and his M.A. and Ph.D. in historical musicology at UCLA, where his major professor was Robert M. Stevenson. Prior to joining the faculty at Kansas State University he was a member of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, Composers Brass Quintet, Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, and the Spoleto (Italy) Symphony Orchestra. Parker has presented papers on a variety of American music topics at numerous national and international conferences. Dr. Parker has been an active participant in the College Music Society, serving as their board member for musicology from 2014-16, as well as being active in the American Musicological Society, Historic Brass Society, International Trumpet Guild, International Musicological Society, and the Society for American Music.

3:15 PM Featured composer presentation: Pei Lu Professor of Music, Director of Teaching & Research Section, Composition Department, Shanghai Conservatory of Music

Pei Lu studied violin at an early age, graduating from Guanxi Art University in 1982 before continuing his composition studies at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He began teaching at the Shanghai Conservatory in 1985, then moving to the United States in 1991 to complete his MM degree at the University of Louisville (1995), followed by his DMA in composition at the University of Michigan (2002). He then taught at the University of Louisville for several years before returning to China to join the composition faculty of the Shanghai Conservatory in 2006, where he is now a full professor. Dr. Lu’s music has been performed at many prestigious venues within the United States, including Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project concerts at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. and at the Chicago Orchestral Center. Other significant U. S. performances have been held at such

venues as Merkin Hall in New York City, The Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Orchestral Center, Minnesota Symphony Hall, and the Wisconsin Green Lake Music Festival. In addition to numerous performances within China, his music has been performed internationally in Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Italy, South Africa, and Canada. Dr. Lu’s music has been described by the Washington Post as being “extremely smart, colorful, delectable and kinetic.”

4:15 PM Serin Oh, graduate student, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Nature Morte for solo piano: The Combination of the Composer’s Appreciation and the Musical Style of the Western Art of the Late Nineteenth Century This presentation will include a live performance and explanation of my Nature Morte for solo piano, which was included in my MM thesis at Ewha Womans University and originally written for two pianists (one piano, four-hands) in 2012. This multi-movement composition was premiered at the C-cube (a young composer’s group of which I am one of the co-founders) Foundation Concert at Buam Art Hall in Seoul, followed by the premiere of the two pianos and four hands version for my MM degree recital at Ewha Womans University in October 2013. In

November 2016, my solo piano version of Nature Morte was performed at the Composers Concert (Hatch Recital Hall) and also at the Eastman Sunday Music series (George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY). In composing this work, one inspiration was early twentieth-century painting in European culture, particularly the exhibition Van Gogh Starry Night and the painter’s dream – from The Musée d'Orsay, which was held at the Seoul Arts Center in 2011. Nature Morte shows my fragmentary impressions and thoughts from the painters of impressionism such as Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, and van Gogh. The lecture-recital and my performance of Nature Morte thus shows my Asian composer’s perspective at looking into the spectrum of twentieth to twenty-first century music.

Serin Oh was born and grew up in South Korea, and she completed her BM and MM degrees in composition at Ewha Womans University, where she studied with Eun-Hye Park and Michael Sidney Timpson. She also holds a second MM degree from the Eastman School of Music (2017), where she studied with David Liptak, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and Robert Morris. Furthermore, Serin Oh is also an active pianist and accompanist performing at many weekly concerts and getting to know vast repertoires, including performing new pieces. Especially at Eastman, she performed as a pianist for the new music ensemble OSSIA concerts, Music for All, Eastman Sunday Music, Composers Concerts and Composition Symposium. She would describe her music as focusing on the characteristics of each instrument by concentrating on the potential and distinguished sound colors. She also broadens her music from such influences as literature, painting, nature and scientific phenomenon. Serin Oh is currently pursuing her DMA in composition from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. 5:00 PM Jacob David Sudol, composition/technology professor, Florida International University

Recent Explorations Combining Eastern and Western Musical Elements with Electronics

In this presentation I will present some works that I have written since 2013 that demonstrate ways I have explored combining Eastern and Western musical elements with electronics. For nearly ten years, I have studied both classical and contemporary Asian music and consciously incorporated elements from these in my compositions. In earlier explorations I primarily

incorporated specific structural or musical elements from Asian music. For example, in a number of works I adapted structural ideas such as the Southeast Asian musical and spiritual concept of time expansion and, in others, I created a repertoire of musical symbols that draws its inspiration, in part, from Chinese Classical Guqin music. In my more recent works, I have progressively moved away from primarily just using specific Eastern musical elements and have instead sought to more thoroughly integrate multiple Eastern musical elements in my works. To do this I have drawn inspiration from non-musical sources such as literature and explored novel ways to create and analyze sounds with technology. The first two works I will discuss are respectively the first and last works in a cycle of four works for solo string instruments and live electronics that all take their titles and inspiration from chapters in the Japanese novel The Tale of Genji. In both of these works the form and materials develop from a single sound, which comes in part from an interest in the Asian concept of drone. I will also discuss …a thinner partition (2015) for three Chinese instruments and electronics, inspired by a line in Chris Marker’s essay-film which states “The partition that separates life from death does not appear so thick to us as it does to a Westerner.” In this work, the electronics primarily reflect the fixed and unchanging nature of death and the performed sounds primarily reflect the dynamism and ephemerality of life; this composition features multiple musical symbols that are adapted from classical Chinese music as well as Western post-spectral techniques. However, unlike in classical Chinese music, these symbols progressively transform in a manner that propel the work’s structural evolution. Finally, I will briefly comment on a series of works titled …spaces to listen to from within. In this series, I have aimed to combine Eastern and Western musical elements with more experimental approaches performing and creating sounds. Conclusions will reflect on the efficacy of these approaches and potential for future explorations. Jacob David Sudol writes intimate compositions that explore enigmatic phenomena and the inner nature of how we perceive sound. His music has been performed over one hundred times by many prestigious ensembles and performers across the USA as well as in Canada, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, China, Thailand, Japan, and Cambodia. His compositions are regularly selected for the most prestigious annual national and international computer music and electronic music conferences. Dr. Sudol is also currently writing a chapter on his music for a future book to be published by Oxford University Press. In 2012, he founded a cello/electro-acoustic duo with his colleague cellist Jason Calloway, and since 2010 he has been in a piano/electro- acoustic duo with his wife Chen-Hui Jen. At FIU he directs the Florida Laptop and Electro-Acoustic Ensemble and in Taiwan he directed the Chiao-Da Laptop Orchestra. He also regularly collaborates on interdisciplinary projects with architect Eric Goldemberg, visual artist Jacek Kolasinski, and the Cambodian dancer/choreographer Chey Chankethya. Dr. Sudol was a Fulbright Taiwan Senior Scholar during the Academic 2015-16 year, and is an Assistant Professor of Music Technology and Composition at Florida International University.

6:00 PM: Group Dinner

Sunday, January 21 (morning) 9:30 AM John O. Robison, musicology professor, University of South Florida From the Slums of Calcutta to the Concert Halls of London: The Life and Music of Indian Composer John Mayer (1929-2004)

Born into extreme poverty in the slums of Calcutta, John Mayer eventually rose beyond his lowly origins to become one of the most innovative intercultural composers of the late twentieth century. Among the many people who facilitated his development as a musician and as a composer, one could cite north Indian classical musician Sanathan Mukerjee, conductor-violinist Mehli Mehta, and Hungarian composer Matyas Seiber as being three of the most influential. Arriving in London in 1952 on a scholarship to study violin at the Royal Academy of Music, Mayer was soon well-established as a professional violinist with the best orchestras in London. In spite of being told by his British professors that he could never be a composer because “Indians only know how to improvise,” Mayer began sixty years ago to develop his

own unique style of writing, one that successfully integrated modern Western techniques such as serialism with Indian ragas, talas, and musical instruments. This paper will discuss some of Mayer’s most innovative compositions, demonstrating his development as a composer from the late 1950s until his accidental death in 2004. His chamber works, whether exclusively for

Western ensembles or including Indian instruments, were commissioned by some of his best friends in England (Rohan da Saram, James Galway, etc.). Choral and orchestral works (Pawitra Naukari, Shivanataraj) will also be emphasized to demonstrate Mayer’s colorful use of sonorities. Music composed for Mayer’s highly-acclaimed Indo-Jazz Fusions ensembles will be mentioned to illustrate his innovative approach to the task of combining Indian with jazz styles. To Mayer, ragas and talas were not the exclusive property of musicians in the north Indian gharanas, but compositional tools for the whole world to enjoy and use in novel ways. John Robison is Professor of Musicology and director of the Early Music Ensemble at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He received his doctorate in musicology from Stanford University in 1975, and has been on the USF music faculty since 1977. The author of Korean Women Composers and Their Music, Johann Klemm: Partitura seu tabulatura italica, and co-author of A Festschrift for Gamal Abdel-Rahim, his research interests range from Renaissance/Baroque topics to contemporary composers from diverse African, Asian and Latin American cultures. He is a versatile musician who performs professionally on multiple string and woodwind instruments. His articles on diverse topics have appeared in various American, European and Asian journals, and his presentations as a scholar and a performer have taken him to six continents. His book on Indian composer John Mayer is expected to appear in 2018, and he has recently completed a book manuscript on Chinese composer Zhu Jianer (1922-2017) that will be published in 2018. He is also working on a book about Beijing composer Wang Xilin. 10:15 AM Akshaya Avril Tucker, graduate student, University of Texas/Austin Shaam for sitar and sinfonietta

I would like to This presentation focuses on my new piece, Shaam for Sitar and Sinfonietta (2017), which was

recently premiered in Austin, Texas by Aruna Kharod and Density 512. Shaam is a mini sitar concerto (duration approx. 8 minutes), and was the product of my experience playing Hindustani music on cello alongside Professor Stephen Slawek and Aruna Kharod on sitar at the University of Texas in Austin. The piece is based on Raag Bihag, a romantic evening raga, and a gat (short composition) in Raag Bihag by Pt. Ravi Shankar. The piece opens with a slow, improvised alaap for the sitar, while the ensemble plays their own notated parts. As the gat melody starts playing (and subsequently repeats), the instrumentation keeps evolving,

orchestrating the dramatic arc I hear in a sitar performance. My goals in writing Shaam were to bring sitar techniques and expression into the chamber orchestra setting. The orchestra is challenged to imitate the sitar phrases, and the sitar is equally challenged to meet the Western Classical musicians through following the conductor for tempo. I will be discussing some of the challenges and experiments that went into creating this piece, and the incorporation of improvisation, as well as the learning it provided for all the musicians (including myself). Akshaya Avril Tucker (1992), ASCAP, is a composer, cellist and Classical Odissi dancer pursuing her MM in composition at the University of Texas at Austin. Her teachers include Yevgeniy Sharlat, Dan Welcher, Reena Esmail, Donald Grantham, Russell Pinkston, and Butch Rovan. She has been studying Hindustani music on cello since 2014, with Sandeep Mishra (sarangi) in Mumbai and Stephen Slawek (sitar) in Austin. Akshaya holds a BA in Music from Brown University. She is Programs Manager at Shastra, an organization dedicated to connecting the musical traditions of India and the West.

11:00 AM TingTing Yang, musicology professor, NanTong University Collision of the Thought of Guqin Music and Contemporary Music:

An Analytical Case of QiGang Chen’s Reflect d’un temps disparu [Presented by Dr. Chen Hongduo on behalf of Dr. Yang.]

Reflect d’un temps disparu, composed by QiGang Chen between 1995-1996, is a concerto for cellist YoYo Ma, which was commissioned by Orchestre National de France. To fully express his surge of nostalgia for the vanished times, the composer selected Three Variations on Plum Blossom, one of the most representational GuQin music in a long history as the prototype for an adaption. This adaption heritages the unique and traditional charm of ancient music, and particularly, brings the Chinese classic images of plum blossom into contemporary music. Guqin music as a brilliant part of traditional Chinese music has enjoyed a history more than three thousand years. Both its musical works and aesthetic ideas have a unique and complete

system, thus it is a formidable task to place GuQin music and western contemporary music in the same musical context. However, QiGang Chen exhibits great originality in the development of GuQin music and techniques of contemporary music, both in dialogue and in coexistence of two languages. With a personal musical discourse, he successfully expresses the common humanistic spirit between eastern and western cultures. This paper, from two aspects of musical structure and musical material, will analyse the influence from the thought of GuQin music in contemporary technique of this work. It tends to explore how the composer derives his inherent motive from the classical structrue of ancient music, and how to use the materials from the theme and pitches of Three Variations on the Plum Blossom to form new sounds by orchestral instruments. In this way, the paper illustrates a perfect combination of traditional Chinese musical elements with contemporary western technique and sounds in QiGang Chen’s work. Finally, from this personal musical discourse, the composer’s unique humanistic perspective beyond the western musical culture could be traced. Dr. Yang TingTing is a Professor of Musicology at NanTong University, and the member of young group musical analysis of French GREAM. She began a postdoctoral fellowship at the Shanghai Conservatory in 2016, to research French spectral music. From 2013-2015, she received the support of the China Scholarship Council and studied as a joint training doctor at Strasbourg University in France. She mainly studies music analysis and composition theory, the analysis of contemporary Eastern and Western music, works and theory of spectral music, etc. Her publications include A study of George Rochberg’s Symphony No.2, translations of Olivier Messiaen’s Préludes and Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus, and numerous reviews and papers about composers as QiGang Chen, Balakirev, George Rochberg, Tristan Murail and spectral music, etc. An active conference participant both at home and abroad, she received an invitation from IRCAM to study at the Stage of sounds analysis in Paris (2015-16). She was also the recipient of the New Academic Prize of the Shanghai Music Conservatory during 2013-2014.

Sunday, January 21, 2:00 PM: Concert 3 (Closing event)

Featuring music by Kyong Mee Choi, Reena Esmail, and Pei Lu

Performers: Eunmi Ko (piano), Ghadeer Abaido (piano), Bennett Astrove (violin), Jeancarlo Gonzalez Cruz (viola), Amanda Emenecker (cello), Gilyoung Kang (violin),Charlotte Lynn (violin), Hoang Pho

(piano), Eduard Teregulov (cello), Julia Tretyakova (cello), John Chatterton (cello),

Valeria Frege Issa (violin), Ko Eun Lee (piano), Dana Milan (piano), Craig Parker (trumpet)

Acknowledgements This second Composition in Asia Symposium and Festival was made possible by support from several institutions and organizations. First, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the USF Office of Research and Innovation for their 2017 Conference Support Grant (this event has been supported, in part, by the USF Research & Innovation Internal Awards Program under Grant No. 0019648). I am also grateful to the people at USF World for supporting my event funding request submitted to them in November 2017. Finally, my special thanks to Dr. Hui Yu, Dean of the College of Arts at Yunnan University, for making it possible to have the Yunnan University College of Arts also provide their much-needed financial support.

John O. Robison

USF is an EO/EA institution