Ursula Kwong-Brown - Part 3

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 124: Ursula Kwong-Brown - Part 3

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

In this week’s episode, we talk to Ursula Kwong-Brown about her work with multimedia, setting text to music, and art as a response to trauma. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Ursula Kwong-Brown, check her out here: https://www.ursulakwongbrown.com/. This episode was originally recorded in February 2024.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano),  as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/15652983

Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Hannah Chen, Addy Geenen, Yoyo Hung-Yu Lin

Curious to hear music by Luna Composition Lab alums? Check out E4TT's annual concert of music by women and non-binary composers, "Midnight Serenades," on January 25.

Chapters

• 0:34 In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Ursula Kwong-Brown, who we spoke to in February 2024.
• 0:42 Can you talk about incorporating multimedia in your work as in your Reflections on Rothko, for example?
• 3:44 So I Should Have Taken the Train, which is for prepared piano, electronics and spoken text. It's a horrifying text and equally chilling composition. But it's not, sadly, it's not that atypical in experience. How did the idea of composing it arise?...
• 6:38 Do you want to talk about the trouble you were having at UC Berkeley? Or would you rather not?

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00
[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble For These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Ursula Kwong-Brown, who we spoke to in February 2024. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

Nanette McGuinness  00:30
Can you talk about incorporating multimedia in your work as in your Reflections on Rothko, for example?

Ursula Kwong-Brown  00:37
Yeah, I was inspired to do the video component of that actually, by Kaija Saariaho's husband, Jean-Baptiste Barrière. So Kaija, who was just a lovely teacher and amazing composer and she passed away very sadly, this year of a brain tumor. She's a really wonderful composer, Finnish. And her husband, Jean-Baptiste was a bit of a mentor of mine when I was at Columbia. And he did a lot of video work with her stuff using a program called Isadora, where he'd do like a live capture of like, for instance, the flutist for NoaNoa, and then superimpose it like on a painting. And the idea was to just try to bring together like, the live aspect, so the live performer with some sort of visual like video, and have them be sort of in one world because you don't want like the live video feed to be distracting too much from the live performer. So the thought was that like you sort of superimpose them and Isadora is just a video program that is very flexible that way. And so that's, I actually just took his, his patch for Kaija's NoaNoa, and used it for my Reflections of Rothko. But I put in Rothko paintings for mine, because they were what had inspired the different parts of it. Yeah, so I am somewhat synesthetic. So I look at a Rothko thing. And I think of melodies and they had inspired the different parts of this viola piece and so it, to me it made sense to then superimpose the image of the violist on to the different paintings that had inspired it.

Nanette McGuinness  02:19
Yeah. And did you enjoy that process? Is that something you might do again? Or does it feel like that piece, that worked, and it is a nice piece? And, but you know, that was a one-off?

Ursula Kwong-Brown  02:28
Well, there's this small problem of copyright. Right, so I don't you know, own Rothko copyright, and he does have like a foundation that I think is somewhat concerned about these things. Often, if the artist is still alive, it's easier because you just reach out to them. And they're often like, sure, cool. But as soon as they die, like I don't know, it ends, it's enters this the whole confusing world that I don't even know how to deal with so I would love to do it with more paintings, but I have to get permission. So if any, any artists out there like once they're fading, they should get in touch.

Nanette McGuinness  03:04
That's funny. Oh, you should look at my mom's art. She's a visual artist. Yeah, she's fabulous.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  03:10
Yeah, I would love to.

Nanette McGuinness  03:11
Yeah, she was one of our interviewees, actually, in the very early part of the podcast, the very first season. Her name is Corinne Whitaker. And her studio is The Digital Giraffe.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  03:22
That's a great name.

Nanette McGuinness  03:24
Yeah, check it out.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  03:25
Yeah, I will, Digital Giraffe, okay.

Nanette McGuinness  03:27
I'll have to connect you guys if you're interested. Let's go forward and then backwards. So "I Should Have Taken the Train," which is for prepared piano, electronics and spoken text. It's a horrifying text and equally chilling composition. But it's not, sadly, it's not that atypical in experience. How did the idea of composing it arise? Because I know you didn't write the text that was the poet whose experiences related is the text as I recall, right?

Ursula Kwong-Brown  03:59
Yeah. So my best friend from college, Hannah Howard, she wrote the text. And the reason I asked her to write it for this was actually she published a memoir when we were 30. It's called Feast: True Love in and Out of the Kitchen. She's a food writer. And, and in it, she's, this happens, right? This, this chef assaults her on the way home. And I remembered it happening. And I also, I had also forgotten that it had happened. Like I had been her best friend at the time. And she told me and I think I was living abroad in London at the time, but like I had sort of forgotten that the whole thing had happened. And as in part because as you say, it's like kind of common, but it was terrible to me as I'm reading this published memoir of my best friend that I was like, how did I forget that she was assaulted? You know? Like, how is this something that, you know, became another hazy part of the summer memories, like this is like how, so I wanted to, to ask her to write more about it, she had only written like one or a couple sentences about it in this book. And I said, could you write a little more? And that's, and then I had another friend of mine who's an actress read it. And so she's the one who does the reading that I use.

Nanette McGuinness  05:26
She did a great job. It's a very powerful piece. So, yeah.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  05:31
Thank you. It's, um, I felt conflicted about it, because I definitely had people who, who could not come to that concert, who I told them about it, you know, trigger warnings at all, and they never listened to it, never wanted to hear it. And, you know, it's like you, you have art that you make, that's too upsetting for some people. And that's, that's hard too, you know, you also want your art to be uplifting and life affirming, and you don't, but also, I felt like I needed to make that. I also had a lot of trouble at UC Berkeley with, with certain people. And so I I felt like it was, it was, it was my way of sort of indirectly, you know, sharing some of the difficulty that I was having personally, but like through my friend's story.

Nanette McGuinness  06:25
Do you want to talk about the trouble you were having at UC Berkeley? Or would you rather not?

Ursula Kwong-Brown  06:30
Yeah, I mean, I don't mind. I was having a lot of trouble with somebody who was a, a major donor to the department. And it was difficult, because they gave a lot of money to the program. And actually, after I left, and there were some additional problems, they ended up being banned from the department. So it ended up being a good story in the end. And that my complaints were ultimately heard. And despite the money his family gave, he was banned. So that was good. It just took, I think, you know, a number of people. But the thing about these stories is, you're never alone. You know, you think you're alone,  but then it turns out, oh, no, no, actually, that person did this to like these other five people. And after you left, to these other people, so like it, you know, even if you're blaming yourself and feeling it's all you like, actually talking about it and bringing, it's always a good thing, because it was never you, you know, right, people who are problems are consistently problems, and it's better for it to be known, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  07:43
Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. It's and it's amazing how often, either because people don't bring things up or are uncomfortable or, or because it isn't encouraged to bring things up. And people are encouraged to just kind of put up with things. And yet it turns out that when these things are aired, that there are a lot of people who say, oh yeah, I had the same experience.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  08:08
Yeah. And that's part of why I wanted to write that piece is I wanted people to realize they weren't alone, you know? Like, like you say, it's not like, part of your question, right was like, it's not so uncommon in experience. It's actually very common. Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  08:24
It's actually very common.  Either as awful as that one or shades of that one, you know. Not everybody has it go quite that far. But yeah, I started listening to it. And I could tell where it was going to go. And I was like, oh, wow. You know, and it really, it definitely should have trigger warnings on it. And I do know someone who couldn't, or didn't want to continue listening through. You know?

Ursula Kwong-Brown  08:50
Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  08:50
Makes sense. But I still think it's important that you wrote it explicit as it is, you know, it's tastefully done, but it's explicit.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  08:58
Thank you. And I actually wrote another piece that was sort of in response to it. It's called I See You, I Hear You, I Believe You, and it's for all women's choir, and it was, it's been performed a couple of times by the San Francisco Girls Choir. And it's just, it's all affirmative. It's the only thing they say is I see you, I hear you, I believe you over and over and over again.

Nanette McGuinness  09:23
Getting chills on the back of my neck. That sounds really powerful.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  09:27
And the girls who wrote about their experience, I was so moved by this like it's, as the composer it's like your dream, right? That these, these girls like, write little like they're like, "it meant so much to me." And like, they, for them they're young, and they're still full of hope. And they were just like, they didn't want to dwell on the negative really, right. Like they were like, like, they didn't want to sing about trauma. They wanted to sing about like believing in one another and supporting each other and like what you can do now, you know, and I was, and so I think that's it, that's just as important as discussing these upsetting things is to have breaks that are about hope and, and supporting one another and believing and because that's so much of it right is simply being like, yes, this happened and I believe you and you're not making it up.

Nanette McGuinness  10:17
Right, exactly. But you know, with young women, the affirmative, especially is really important. It wouldn't be appropriate for them to be even touching that other text, whereas the affirmation is so important.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  10:30
Right. and it's not that that they don't know that that all happens, like they're on the internet, like the rest of us. But we don't, it doesn't need to be like the only art we create, you know?

Nanette McGuinness  10:40
Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  10:43
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Ursula Kwong-Brown, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area or to make a tax deductible donation, please visit us at www.e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble For These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]