By Vivian Fung

I recently had the opportunity to pen a few words for NewMusicBox about my identity in relation to my work as a composer (see here). In that piece, I wrote about my experience as a “banana” – “yellow as a product of Chinese parents; white as a result of my being born in Canada to parents who immigrated to Canada before I was born. And as it is for many second-generation Asians, the question of my identity includes a complex web of issues that have no easy resolution.”

The two works that will be featured in Astral’s Spiritual Voyages Festival, Pizzicato for string quartet and Glimpses for prepared piano, both combine my love for non-Western music with my training in the craft of Western composition. That combination embodies my journey towards embracing my identity as a multinational citizen. Both works reference the interlocking rhythmic patterns found in Balinese gamelan, and both allude to non-Western colors – pipa plucking in Pizzicato, for example, or a deep Tibetan-like drone in the third movement of Glimpses.

The two works address issues that I continually grapple with in my work. Even though each piece I write faces different artistic challenges, issues of my Asian identity underscore many of my recent compositions. For me, composing is a perfect catharsis, expressing in music the seemingly contradictory emotions and thoughts simmering in my inner world.