what, you mean you've never heard of chen yi?

Chen Yi is the composer on whose music I wrote my not-a-dissertation-thank-you-very-much.

She's a Chinese-American composer who has won many awards and received many important commissions. I won't list them here because you can check out her website and see them for yourself. Her music is very interesting to me (obviously); in the 1980s she was part of the Chinese New Wave (the first generation of composers to emerge from the People's Republic of China after the Cultural Revolution), and like the other composers in that group she doesn't feel constricted by the boundaries of different musical traditions. (STOP READING NOW IF YOU THINK MUSICAL ANALYSIS IS BORING.) She writes music that combines Western modernism (and by "modernism" I mean a free approach to dissonance, a rhythmic sensibility that is post-Stravinsky, and an interest in extended instrumental technique, in a nutshell--this is lowercase modernism, not uppercase Modernism) with certain elements of Chinese traditional music (and by this I mean programmatic works based on Chinese ideas, instrumental effects intended to imitate the sounds of traditional instruments, and the occasional use of Chinese sources for pitch and rhythmic materials--nothing so overt as the harmonization of a folk song).

(YOU CAN START READING AGAIN.)

While I was researching and writing, I corresponded with her by email but I'd never met her. So when I heard she was going to be in Bangkok I was very excited--after all, you don't spend a year of your life learning about someone, without you get curious about what they're like in person. In addition, it was another of those small-world moments that are so common in the world of academic music (maybe a future blog entry should trace some of the improbable connections I've encountered):

One of her doctoral students at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, is Thai. He's a part-time faculty member at a university in Bangkok--since the Thai academic calendar is so different from the Western one, he can come back here in the summer and spend almost a whole semester teaching before returning to the U.S. in September. The university where he teaches is holding a small composition festival, and he thought, what better opportunity to bring his teacher to meet his students? So here she is.

And there I went.

Husband and I were able to make an appointment to meet with her in between the official events of the conference (lectures and concerts, punctuated by frequent and mandatory snacks), and she was nice enough to spend several hours with us. I'm so glad I met her.