CAIC’s broadcasts from the 2021 Collaborative Works Festival continue. This week’s broadcast is of the opening performance: CONCERT III: The Songs We Carried. This is my program note.

CAIC’s broadcasts from the 2021 Collaborative Works Festival continue. This week’s broadcast is of the opening performance: CONCERT II: Strangers. Below is my program note.

The broadcast of Strangers runs through this Thursday evening, October 28! Please check it out below!

Over the course of the next month, CAIC is broadcasting performances from the 2021 Collaborative Works Festival. This week’s broadcast is of the opening performance: CONCERT I: Songs of the New World. Below is my program note.

The broadcast of Songs of the New World runs through this Thursday evening, October 21! Please check it out!

“A few weeks ago at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance, a Chinese American composition teacher, Bright Sheng, was teaching an undergraduate composition seminar. In the class, he presented a video of the 1965 National Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s Othello in which Lawrence Olivier appears…”

I don’t remember what I did on the evening of September 10, 2001. Whatever it was, I was so tired that I recall blearily resolving to skip my early dance class at the Manhattan School of Music on the morning of the 11th, just days into the fall semester…

“…The hot, wet, tropical-ish temperatures combined with a little hurricane excitement had me thinking about a beautiful song by the composer Harry Burleigh…The song that kept coming to mind as I navigated the tropical-feeling weather was Burleigh’s Among the Fuchsias, from his collection, Five Songs of Laurence Hope.…”

“Happy May Day, everyone. I’ve been pretty excited about the arrival of spring lately. It feels filled with extra symbolism these days as more and more of my loved ones are getting vaccinated, and the world seems to be re-emerging into some sort of new ‘normal’. I recently filmed a recital of songs about Springtime…”