Music of our Time
Lei Liang SCHOTT MUSIC
Lei Liang (*1972) Biography What raised the evening out of the ordinary - far, far out of the ordinary - was composer Lei Liang, who brought pipa and quartet together in a work so brilliantly original and inarguably gorgeous that the two may never be the same...Liang’s Five Seasons, a sonic tour de force from a composer not yet 40. - Stephen Brookes, The Washington Post
Lei Liang currently serves as Associate Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego. Lei Liang’s music is published exclusively by Schott Music Corporation (New York). *www.lei-liang.com *www.schott-music.com *www.eamdc.com/psny
Heralded as “one of the most exciting voices in New Music” (The Wire), Lei Liang is a Chineseborn American composer whose works have been described as “hauntingly beautiful and sonically colorful” by The New York Times. Winner of the 2011 Rome Prize, Lei Liang is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Aaron Copland Award. He was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert for the inaugural concert of the CONTACT! new music series.
Lei Liang studied composition with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Robert Cogan, Chaya Czernowin, and Mario Davidovsky, and received degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music (BM and MM) and the Harvard University (Ph.D). A Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, he has held fellowships from Harvard Society of Fellows and the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships.
Printed in USA · KAT 3078-99
Other commissions and performances have come from the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, the Heidelberger Philharmonisches Orchester, Thailand Philharmonic, Berkeley Symphony, the Fromm Music Foundation, Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, the National Endowment for the Arts, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, MAP Fund, pipa virtuoso Wu Man, the Arditti Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, New York New Music Ensemble and Boston Musica Viva. Lei Liang’s music is recorded on Mode, New World, Innova, Telarc and Naxos Records. As a scholar, he is active in the research and preservation of traditional Asian music.
Lei Liang Works Orchestra Brush-Stroke, for small orchestra (2004), 11' Harp Concerto, for harp and chamber orchestra (2008), 15' Tremors of a Memory Chord, for piano and grand Chinese orchestra (2011), 18'20'' Saxophone Concerto "Xiaoxiang", for alto saxophone and orchestra (2009), 9' Verge, for 18 solo strings (2009), 11'30'' Chamber/Vocal/Solo A Dream Within A Dream, for SATB chorus, soprano sax and piano (2007), 5' A Journey into Desire, for solo guitar (2009), 11’ Against Piano, for piano (two players, one inside piano) (1999), 8' Ascension, for two trumpets, horn, trombone, tuba and percussion (2007/2008), 11' Aural Hypothesis, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and vibraphone (2010), 11' Five Seasons, for string quartet and pipa (2010), 18' Fragile Zones, for solo piano (2007), 1' Garden Eight, for solo piano (1996), 14' Garden Nine, for a cappella voices (1996), 7' Gobi Canticle, for violin and cello (2004), 10' Gobi Canticle, for violin and viola (2010), 10' Gobi Gloria, for string quartet (2006), 10' Hidden Notes, for solo piano (2007), 1' In Praise of Shadows, for solo flute (2005), 11' Lake, for two flutes (1999), ca. 6' Lake, for flute and clarinet (1999), ca. 6' Listening for Blossoms, for flute, harp, violin, viola, contrabass and piano (2011), 11' Messages of White, for saxophone quartet, erhu, sheng, yangpin, pipa and percussion (2011), 17' Memories of Xiaoxiang, for alto saxophone and tape (2003), ca. 9' Milou, for soprano sax, four alto saxes, baritone sax, percussion, electric guitar, piano and harpsichord (1999, rev. 2002), 8' Motion Parallel, for sheng (Chinese mouth organ) and guanzi (Chinese oboe), (2004), 13' My Windows, for solo piano (1996/2007), 14' Parts for a Floating Space, for soprano sax, baritone sax and percussion (2001), 14' Peking Opera Soliloquoy, for alto sax (1994), 10' Piano, Piano, for improvising pianist (2011), 13' Serashi Fragments, for string quartet (2005), ca. 8' Some Empty Thoughts of a Person from Edo, for solo harpsichord (2001), ca. 9' Septet, for flute, clarinet, zheng, violin, double bass, piano and percussion (2006), 13' Trio, for cello, piano and percussion (2002), 9' Winged Creatures, for harpsichord, two violins and cello (2006), 5' Yuan, for saxophone quartet (2008), 17'
From the Composer Born in China during the last years of the Cultural Revolution, I grew up as a Chinese citizen, but I was homeless spiritually and culturally. I had a strong urge to question everything I was taught, and to discover or create my own spiritual and cultural homeland. After I left Beijing and came to America in 1990 at age 17, my search broadened and intensified. It is not a cultural entity with a convenient border marked “China,” nor a sense of nostalgia that I am seeking. That would be too easy. While cultural and historical borders are often sharply delineated, simplified and celebrated, they tend to be, more often than not, characterized by fluidity, uncertainty and subjects of deep ambivalence. For example, the majority of court orchestras in Tang Dynasty China (618-907CE) were foreign orchestras; many instruments that are labeled as quintessentially Chinese, such as the pipa (lute), were imported from Asia Minor and other foreign lands; court ensembles were often spatialized and performed with dance. Histories, traditions and my own identities are merely cultural constructs. Any totalized or essentialized “Asian” tradition can only be mystifying and meaningless on a personal level. I consider cultural labels, clichéd quotations or exotic instrumental treatments as badges of intellectual laziness and lack of originality. I wish to further reduce my musical materials to reveal their bare essence, while enriching their surfaces and complicating their transformative processes; and to test them in every medium I encounter. Each sound I create should bear the imprint of a handmade craft, and I aspire for it to radiate the warmth of human touch and to enfold a thickening of time. This is a lifetime pursuit that can only be realized through persistent practice. It is what I do on a daily basis: engage in an intense dialogue with history; argue with inherited and new dogmas; take matters of materials, methods and details seriously; resist authorities, gimmicks and fashionable trends to keep my music vital, relevant and personal. I search for the life force contained in a sonic material, its energy and potential for subtle and radical transformation in the ever-changing environments and contexts that we are in. These living sounds are constantly altering their own boundaries, be it in the frequency, amplitude and spectral domain. Isn’t it only natural for us to
do the same with this art form we call “music?”
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