Composition/Improvisation and Living Memory

Compositions are vehicles for memory – improvisation keeps these memories alive, vital and everchanging.

As a composer and a performer in the creative music tradition, I see integrating composition and improvisation in my works as a means to contribute to collective memory in our communities. So, for example my versions of "Great Wall" or "Autumn Moon Reflected on the Lake" retain the root of where these songs come from in their sound but represent the telling or Re: Telling of these stories in a NOW or moment to moment context. My original works, such as the components of my recent Shanghai 1948 (parts of which my ensemble will perform on September 29) or Diaspora Tale #1, are efforts to make vessels for my family's history as part of the greater collective memory of a community's experience in diaspora.