Lei Liang: "Great Learning" and Opening the Inner Eyes (composer)
Reflections on Music and Nature
Release Date: 02/02/2024
Lei Liang: "Great Learning" and Opening the Inner Eyes (composer)
Reflections on Music and Nature
In Chinese, the word for university (大学) translates literally as “Great Learning.” For composer Lei Liang (prof. at UC San Diego), composing at a university means one has the ability to collaborate with and learn from other scholars in vastly different disciplines. The work of Huang Binhong (1865-1955) served as the inspiration for Lei’s orchestral work, “A thousand mountains, a million streams.” Binhong, having lost his sight later in life, demonstrates how a “handicap” can ultimately become a superpower leading to greater creativity. We also talk about the cicadas of his...
info_outline
Alli Ross & Alyssa Schmidt: Thinking Beyond Product (dance / dramaturgy)
Reflections on Music and Nature
How can we collaborate with the environment around us as theater-makers? What is the relationship between “process” and “product”? How can we see beyond the goal of a project to understand and honor its surprising reverberations outside the so-called “actual project”? Dramaturg Allyssa Schmidt and movement artist Alli Ross, both professors at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, help me ask and answer these questions on and off mic. They not only talk about their ideas, but implement them in the way they teach and make art… AND in the way they do an interview for a podcast: Outdoors,...
info_outline
Peter London: Nature is Our Teacher (visual artist)
Reflections on Music and Nature
Visual artist Peter London grew up in Brooklyn NY, which perhaps makes him a city kid. But for his entire life, he has been obsessed with escaping the limitations of cities and human perception, seeking insights not from other humans, but from the natural world. He sees the cosmos as the ultimate teacher for all of us. In our conversation, we discuss a wide range of topics, from how one’s artistic process can imitate the cosmos, to his involvement with civil rights in the 1960’s, to the fascinating intersection of his work as an artist, teacher, and art therapist. We also discuss his...
info_outline
Newtown Odyssey: The Beauty and Ugliness of a Polluted Creek (floating opera)
Reflections on Music and Nature
feat. Kurt Rohde (musician/composer), Dana Spiotta (writer), and Marie Lorenz (artist) Why write a normal opera when you can write one for an outdoor performance on top of a polluted urban creek? Is it simple? No. Is it worth it? Absolutely. The creators of Newtown Odyssey, an actual floating opera, ask us to get our shoes a little dirty, let birds and machinery join the opera, and appreciate the horror and beauty of rainbow patterns of oil on the creek’s surface. They speak about the joys and challenges of collaborating with each other and their literal surroundings on unconventional work,...
info_outline
Season 2 Trailer
Reflections on Music and Nature
What's to come in Season 2 of RMN: opera , composer/musician , writer , artist , composer (Lucy Yao, Dorothy Chan) (dramaturgy) & (movement) , visual artist
info_outline
Gabriela Lena Frank, composer/activist
Reflections on Music and Nature
from Oct 4, 2020: "Gabriela Lena Frank is 48, but wants to live to be 100, when we've re-imagined a better, greener society. For her, that starts with her music-making. GLF is a composer and pianist based in Northern California and founder of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. In our conversation and by example with the GLFCAM, she articulates what a genuinely eco-friendly musical practice could look like, easily connecting a range of big topics from climate change to capitalism, the ubran/rural divide, and authenticity, encouraging us to shed our over-perfectionism in order to...
info_outline
Carlos & Brennen, composer/performer duo
Reflections on Music and Nature
from Sep 3, 2020: Composer/pianist Carlos McMillan Fuentes and clarinetist/multi-instrumentalist Brennen Milton are a Sacramento-based duo known as "Carlos and Brennen." We talk about their February performance with soprano Robin Fischer at Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum complementing American impressionist Granville Redmond's (who was deaf) landscape paintings. Other topics include the meaning of the phrase "natural," and Carlos and Brennen's ideas about representation in music. We end with one of Carlos's compositions, "Silentium Amoris," a lustful piece inspired by an Oscar Wilde poem that...
info_outline
Song Sessions, whale song ensemble
Reflections on Music and Nature
from August 6, 2020: Humans aren't the only ones who make music. The whales were not available for this interview, but I was able to chat with the lovely humans of "Song Sessions," an ensemble that performs music inspired by the complex structures underneath the surface of whale song. We talked about the ensemble's work, songs and improvisations of whales, past composers inspired by whales, and the intersection of art, science, and activism. This project is affiliated with Landscape Music’s Earth Year 2020 - learn more at
info_outline
Omari Tau, performer/composer/director
Reflections on Music and Nature
from July 9, 2020: Omari Tau feels at once like a student and an old man. He does it all - and well! He's Sacramento-based singer, actor, composer, musical director, and co-founder of Rogue Music Project and Trio MôD. Omari talks with Ryan about the notions of "mastery" and well-roundedness, one's naturally evolving career, ideal environments for creativity, his opera about Dorthy Parker, and a multimedia project with MôD which explores the rich and complicated history of Oak Park, one of Sacramento's oldest suburbs. Tau: Night at the Algonquin (scene ends at ): This project is...
info_outline
Nell Shaw Cohen, composer
Reflections on Music and Nature
from July 2, 2020: New York-based composer Nell Shaw Cohen draws an analogy between her process and the "Landscape" visual artists. Nell talks with Ryan about her music, her work on the LandscapeMusic.org publication/network, the notion of the audience, and the role of an artist as someone, among other things, uniquely positioned to imagine alternatives to the ridiculous and destructive society we live in. This project is affiliated with Landscape Music’s Earth Year 2020 - learn more at
info_outlineIn Chinese, the word for university (大学) translates literally as “Great Learning.” For composer Lei Liang (prof. at UC San Diego), composing at a university means one has the ability to collaborate with and learn from other scholars in vastly different disciplines. The work of Huang Binhong (1865-1955) served as the inspiration for Lei’s orchestral work, “A thousand mountains, a million streams.” Binhong, having lost his sight later in life, demonstrates how a “handicap” can ultimately become a superpower leading to greater creativity. We also talk about the cicadas of his childhood in Beijing, the role of titles for composers/audiences, and how technology can actually deepen our listening practice, among many other topics. Lei also cautions against the dangers of “jumping on the bandwagon” of trendy labels and political expediency.
Want to promote these conversations? Rate the podcast, leave a review, subscribe, and share your thoughts in the YouTube comments where you can watch video :)
YouTube: https://youtu.be/fOs8DgtRzLc
Lei Liang: https://sites.google.com/site/leiliangcomposer2/
Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP): https://youtu.be/sj3JxTtNsjs?si=kuE9Uesc02imnVNY
Lei Lab: https://lei-lab.ucsd.edu/