Key

* Mark S. Kelly Scholarship
+ Hansen Music Fellow
^ Faculty Guest Artist
#Guest Artist

Edgard Varèse, Program Note from introduction for performance by Frank Zappa, Live in Vancouver, 1968

This is a number we always play when people ask us to play more because we know that after we play this, they couldn’t possibly ever want to hear us again. Four years ago in Canada, I think it was in Toronto, there was a thing that happened with the symphony orchestra, where there was an American composer named Edgard Varèse - quite a spiffy composer. The Americans didn’t give a shit about him because he was writing stuff that was too weird for their ears. But it just so happened that he was about 80 years old, and when composers get that old certain segments of the musical population begin to get a conscience about the fact that they never played this man’s music. He was really writing some heavy stuff but nobody wanted to hear it, so Canada decided, well we’re a very cultural nation and we will have a performance of this man’s music, so they have this Varèse concert, and they bring Mr. Varèse up - dottering old man. Here he is, been writing for a long time, hardly ever gets to hear any of his music and Canada was going to do him a favor and they’re gonna play some of his tunes for him. So they play this one piece that he wrote called Déserts, which is a composition for orchestra with interpolations of electronic tape, you know, pre-recorded sounds, and some of the great Canadian musicians were there playing in the orchestra, and they hated the music, and they played it really bad and when the tape sections came in the musicians on stage sat there and laughed all the way through it, and then the audience started laughing, and at the end of the performance Varèse stood up and applauded for the orchestra. we’re going to play a piece of music (Octandre) that was written by Edgar Varèse, and we’re going to ruin it for you – but you will be able to identify with it anyway.

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Shuying Li, Kung Fu, Program Note By Composer

When people talk about Kung Fu, they often think of China. However, as a composer born and grew up in China, my understanding of Kung Fu was somewhat ambiguous. True, Kung Fu has a strong link with Martial Arts, which has attracted hundreds of thousands of admirers and followers worldwide. However, on the other hand, Kung Fu has become an umbrella term that has come to encompass many aspects of Chinese people's daily lives, such as popular culture, exercise regimens, interpersonal relationships, aesthetics, philosophies, and so on.

It was not until I encountered a documentary on Bruce Lee's journey with Kung Fu and Hollywood that I started to comprehend the core spirit that Kung Fu has in guiding one's endeavors and life pursuits. As a result, I decided to compose a work with my own reflection of Kung Fu and its spirit.

In three movements, Kung Fu explores the different styles and levels of what Kung Fu represents to people in a universal way. A more general summary of the Wushu spirit in the first movement, a contrasting second movement focusing on the soft yet powerful Tai Chi, both lead to the final movement of "Jiang Hu." As Bruce Rusk, a professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, interpreted, "Jianghu...refers to a social space in which people are away from familial and local ties for extended periods that are governed by informal rules (officials away from home are not in jianghu). I couldn't find a good catchall translation. In this case, it could be "the scene," as Kaiser Kuo suggests, or even "everyone" (implicitly, everyone involved in martial arts)." Jianghu, in this case, is also a representation of my ultimate understanding of Kung Fu. It represents a universal rule, belief, and practice rooted in all of us. It catalyzes to connect people in different backgrounds for a more harmonized society.