Lunar Module with Lucy Chen - Part 1

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 137: Lunar Module with Lucy Chen - Part 1

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 continue our Lunar Module, a mini-series with the E4TT/ Luna Composition Lab Call for Scores winners and commissioned composers. Today we are joined by Lucy Chen, who we spoke to in May 2024. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more, check out her music here: https://lucylchen.com/.

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),  in SF, CA on January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), in SF, CA on October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/16421509

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, 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 Lunar Module episode, we are joined by E4TT Luna Composition Lab, commissioned composer Lucy Chen who we spoke to in May 2024.
• 0:58 Please tell me about yourself, who you are, where you grew up, your background in music, where you're going next, and what's important to you.
• 2:24 How does it feel being in the Bay Area and Stanford compared to Maryland? Is it a culture change?
• 3:31 Do you think you're going to major in music or something else, or you have no idea?
• 4:24 What does being a composer mean to you and what draws you to that?
• 7:39 I didn't know you were also a visual artist. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, and does it have any relationship with your music? Is there much more correspondence than what you've just kind of brought up, or are they kind of living parallel?

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 Lunar Module episode, we are joined by E4TT Luna Composition Lab, commissioned composer Lucy Chen [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] who we spoke to in May 2024.

Nanette McGuinness  00:33
Thank you so much for doing this interview with us. And congratulations also on being chosen for the call for scores commissions.

Lucy Chen  00:42
Thank you.

Nanette McGuinness  00:43
We're really looking forward to that. Please tell me about yourself, who you are, where you grew up, your background in music, where you're going next, and what's important to you.

Lucy Chen  00:53
Yea. So, my name is Lucy Chen. I'm currently a freshman at Stanford finishing up my freshman year. And I grew up in Maryland. I've lived in Maryland basically all my life, and I would also go to China pretty frequently during the summer to visit my relatives, and so that's kind of where I've been for my whole life. I started playing piano when I was four, and I've been playing for a long time, played very consistently. And then I started violin when I was 10. And then so I've just been kind of playing these two instruments. And then over quarantine, I I think I really wanted to think more about, like, why do these pieces that I play sounds so good and like what's kind of like, the theory and the writing that goes behind this. And so I kind of told all that to my mom, and then she encouraged me to study composition. So I started studying composition just a little bit before COVID happened. And then I think, because of COVID, I actually got to focus a lot on just like being home with my piano and writing a lot, and that was a big part of why I got so much into composition, and I've been composing since then.

Nanette McGuinness  02:10
That's wonderful. How does it feel being in the Bay Area and Stanford compared to Maryland? Is it a culture change?

Lucy Chen  02:19
Yeah, it's definitely a big change, I think, especially in a university like this, where so many people come from, like, very accomplished backgrounds, because that's probably they have probably had to do a lot of work to, like, go somewhere like this. And also, just like some of the culture in the Bay Area, it's very, like, tech focused, or, like, a lot about, like, AI and stuff like that, which is very interesting to learn about. I definitely was not exposed to this kind of culture back in Maryland. But also just being in college and getting to know a bunch of people from like all around the world, all across the country, and everyone is like different majors and different interests, and also meeting like musicians like myself, and just getting to know like a bunch of different perspectives that I was not exposed to in high school, it's been a very enriching experience, and I feel like it's opened my eyes a lot.

Nanette McGuinness  03:15
Oh, wonderful, well, college is supposed to do that. So that's great. Do you think you're going to major in music or something else, or you have no idea?

Lucy Chen  03:22
Yeah, I'm planning to double major. I'm already starting to, like, fill out my requirements and stuff. So one of my majors, or what I'm planning right now, because I don't know, maybe it could change, because I'm a freshman, but I'm planning to double major in music composition and then economics. Cuz that's been another academic interest of mine. But I hope, hope one day that I can, like, kind of meld the interest together. But studying composition here has been very cool too, because there's different perspectives on like, like, how to do, like certain things in your music and stuff. And the professors here have also introduced me to different composers and techniques that I didn't know about before. So, it's been very cool.

Nanette McGuinness  04:10
Wonderful. What does being a composer mean to you and what draws you to that?

Lucy Chen  04:17
Yeah, this is a question I thought about a lot, especially when I compose something, and then it comes to life, and I'm just like, wow, like, this entire process was just so special. And I think just the position of being a composer is just like, to me, it's such an exciting person to be, because you can basically bring, like, any story or emotion or a very big concept or even a minute detail, like, oh, this piece is going to be about what two blades of grass sound like when they're next to each other. Like, you can write about anything and make it something beautiful. And I think that is just such a special process. And I'm so grateful that I can kind of tap into this sort of process, and you can just bring all these little things, or like big things to life, like ideas to life, by writing different gestures and different instruments. And it's almost like an artist with a paintbrush since I do art too, I think it's a very similar process. And also in terms of, if you're thinking about like tempered notes, like the same 12 notes, you can arrange them in infinite ways, and they can sound like infinitely different and it'll all be very beautiful. So what draws me to composing is, first of all that, and also just being able to write about my own voice and like my own experiences, whether that's just like me being with my friends or something that emotionally impacted me, or my cultural experiences with my family, and just making a window through music to allow other people to feel how I feel about something. I think one of my most like special musical experiences was when I wrote this orchestra piece for my high school youth orchestra. And it was about, it was like adapted from, like, a Chinese folk story. And I'm Chinese, just to clarify, but, but, yeah. And then I kind of added in my own experiences in China, and I melded all these feelings together. And also it was my senior year, so this was my last performance with this youth orchestra that I've been in for like five years, and all of that came together in this piece. And then when I rehearsed it with the orchestra and with the conductor that I also had gotten really close to. The final performance was just so, like, emotional, and it was so great being able to play with everyone, because I got to play piano there too. So it was very cool, because the piano is in the middle of the orchestra, so you get to hear everyone around you, and you're like, wow. Like this feeling is right now, like it's being shared by everyone. Everyone's playing together. We all know it's the last concert. And I think just experiences like that, it makes me remember how much I love composing and just how real of a emotional experience it can bring to everyone.

Nanette McGuinness  07:15
Oh yes, it sounds like it was a really special feeling and a special performance. And you know, with the surround sound. And it must have been very powerful. I didn't know you were also a visual artist. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, and does it have any relationship with your music? Is there much more correspondence than what you've just kind of brought up, or are they kind of living parallel?

Lucy Chen  07:40
Yeah. So I'm definitely not as, like, serious of a visual artist as I am a musician, but my mom really loves painting and art, and she really kind of brought me into this, like, artistic world. So she would always take me to, like, art museums, and I would used to hate being dragged there, and then one day I grew up, and I loved it, and so that was good for her, and good for me too. And yeah, so I would see her sketching stuff, and then that kind of led me to start drawing too. And I really like painting. I think one of the reasons is because I don't know if you know what synesthesia is, but...

Nanette McGuinness  08:18
I do

Lucy Chen  08:19
...okay, yeah, it's like...

Nanette McGuinness  08:20
But tell the... tell the listeners, in case they don't. I actually know a number of people who have it, and many of them are composers.

Lucy Chen  08:27
Yes, I think it's a very high correlation. Um, it's basically this like neurological condition where your brain mixes different senses together. So for some people, they can taste a sound, or they can, like, hear a color, but for me, it's like for different letters in the alphabet and different even Chinese characters, they have different colors, and then different sounds have different colors, and then so something I really enjoyed doing In my free time was just like, putting on a song or a piece that I really liked, and then I would just like, make a painting based off of it. And I think once I did that with one of my own pieces, I haven't done that too much, though, but there's, there's a little bit of overlap between my own music and painting and drawing. And also sometimes when I'm envisioning, like, how I want to write the next section of a piece I'll think about like, which colors I want it to be, which might not be limited to composers with synesthesia, but just like, This section will be, like, more gloomy. It'll have, like, dark blue or whatever. And then see what, how different instruments can correspond with that.

Nanette McGuinness  09:40
Mmhmm

Lucy Chen  09:40
Yeah, I think for people with and without synesthesia, art and music are very well tied together.

Nanette McGuinness  09:46
That's for sure. You know you're right that many composers go with a mood for an experience or a piece of music, and then they often associate that mood with a color. But I. Think also the people I know who have synesthesia, it's mostly the color with sound association the way you're you're describing that. I don't have that, but I think it's very powerful and interesting. We actually commissioned a piece Guernica by Jeffrey Hoover. He did not have synesthesia, but he was an artist and a composer, and we commissioned him to do it because, you know, it was relating to the Picasso as well as to the historical event. And so we thought his sensibility would be a good match. And it was, it was a very powerful piece. So, you know, the... that combination of the arts that way can be very interesting. So it just gives you an extra dimension in what you do.

Lucy Chen  10:45
Yeah

Nanette McGuinness  10:45
That's great.

Nanette McGuinness  10:48
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Lucy Chen 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]