Songs written, composed, and produced between 2021 and 2025. Most are bilingual; the lyrics pages carry the Mandarin alongside the English.
This song started off with two crazy ideas: “what if I compose with no meter but along a motif”, and “what if I switch its mood completely in its second half”?
Starting the first half of the song with serenity and coldness, the second half dives into a burning zeal.
Performed at Shanghai Baixin Bookstore and Dwellers Art Space, “When Stars Fall into the River” is something I wrote when I had just landed in NYC, overwhelmed by this metropolitan city. Reflecting on my homesickness, I wrote this lullaby for adults to give myself and my audience a calming space — to admit I was lost, but there is always hope.
Performed by the World Music Ensemble at the Grant Recital Hall, Brown University, Blue Scar is a single of two songs composed and mixed in an attempt to capture the possible consequences of water-related environmental crises. With the two songs, I hope to help my audience connect emotionally with the material and arrive at a basic-level understanding of the severity of the problems.
Gentle, ethereal, and sad, “Withering Land” talks about rising sea levels. While it serves as a reflection on this pressing issue, it also carries a sense of nostalgia, as I contemplate the future loss of beloved coastal areas that hold special meaning to me. The song possesses a captivating quality that lends itself to being looped, allowing listeners to fully immerse themselves in its evocative content.
With an accent on the more eerie side of my music, “Thirst in the Waves” addresses the issue of water scarcity by illustrating a world dominated by arid deserts and an acidic ocean. Contrasting with “Withering Land”, this piece delves into a more experimental and cinematic style, evoking the ambiance of film scores. To enhance its theme, I generated a string of sounds in Max/MSP using data on global fresh water consumption. The bubbling sound effect mimics the sensation of breathing underwater and serves as a forewarning of impending suffocation; its volume increases in correlation with the rise in the source data.
An experiment in creating water-like sound. Part of the single “Two Quiet Years”.
“Rendezvous” refers to a meeting at an agreed time and place, typically between two people.
The irony lies in this: while in the lyrics the singer asks the other person to come only at their convenience, she is also speaking contrary to her own thought.