Lunar Module with Lucy Chen - Part 2

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 138: Lunar Module with Lucy Chen - Part 2

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/16421625

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 continue talking to E4TT Luna Composition Lab, commissioned composer Lucy Chen who we spoke to in May 2024.
• 0:46 Are there other aspects of music that interest you, or music and art, or, you know?...
• 3:32 Any thoughts about the piece that you're writing for us?
• 7:25 Do you have any mentors, interests or influences you'd like to share with us?

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 continue talking to E4TT Luna Composition Lab, commissioned composer Lucy Chen [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] who we spoke to in May 2024.

Nanette McGuinness  00:34
Are there other aspects of music that interest you, or music and art, or, you know?...

Lucy Chen  00:40
Yeah, I think just in music, like a lot of people, especially people of my age, we just love listening to music, like all sorts of genres. I especially really love jazz. And I actually love it, because I sometimes don't know what's going on. Like, I feel like when I listen to a classical piece, I can usually tell like, Oh, this is a cadence that happens, and this is why. But in jazz, because I'm very classically trained, I'm not a jazz musician, sometimes they'll play something and I'm like, what like That sounds so cool, but I have no idea what just happened. That's why I like it. Yeah, yeah. And I really want to get, like, learn more about jazz, and I also just love listening to a bunch of different genres, like, like, like 70s, 80s, or even like pop, yeah. I just love discovering new music in general. Like, Spotify is my best friend.

Nanette McGuinness  01:36
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I listen to all sorts of music. I'm fairly omnivorous on the subject.

Lucy Chen  01:43
Yeah, I... I'm also, like, one of my classes right now is about writing, and then our topic is about, like, how health and wellness have to do with music. So I've been thinking about different aspects of music for a while, and not just from my own standpoint, but also kind of like academic historical standpoint. And what I've learned is that so many cultures used to use music, or they still do. They use music to, like, remember their stories, because it's very easy to remember stuff when they have rhythm and rhyme. Like, that's why we remember lyrics so well, they've been doing this for like 1000s of years. Like, they'll use drums or, like, their own traditional instruments, and just tell stories and Connect community with the music and the lyrics. And then these lyrics are passed down for like, 1000s of years.

Nanette McGuinness  02:09
Collective memory, yeah.

Lucy Chen  02:37
Yeah. That was just very cool to learn about because it's just like, wow. Like, music is something that's just truly ingrained in the human experience throughout our existence, and I think that's why we know it's gonna stay too, and that's also why it makes me excited to be a composer, because it's like, I'm kind of adding to this timeline of music being used to represent ourselves, this timeline that's been there basically forever.

Nanette McGuinness  03:06
mmhmm

Lucy Chen  03:07
So that's a part of music that will always intrigue me.

Nanette McGuinness  03:11
Yeah, that's true. You know, for ritual, for collective memory, for healing, music has so many communal uses. Any thoughts about the piece that you're writing for us?

Lucy Chen  03:25

Yeah, I've been thinking about it a little bit, and I think a lot of, like, I use a lot of music just to write about my own feelings, because I also like journaling a lot. So I think there's, like, a parallel between that. But I've been thinking a lot about, like, how I've grown in the freshman year of college since it's like a very turbulent year, you can learn a lot, and it's really like the first year of your life where you can kind of completely choose your own path in any given day, like not go to class, or, like, whatever You thought, not saying I did that, but it's possible... [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  04:02
That, there isn't the parent figure leaning over you going, "hmm, hmm, hmm?" [laughs]

Lucy Chen  04:09
Yeah, which is good and also bad. But anyways, I feel like this year I learned a lot about myself, and just like from meeting so many people, I've kind of started to figure out who I am and also who I like. Really want to be like the most and like, I'm starting to find my people, or even defining what my people is. It's like learning more about who I really am. So I was thinking maybe I could write something about that journey. And since I'm using like cello and piano, I could kind of use the, maybe the timbre of the cello, like give more clarity to the voice of the cello to represent, like, my own clarity of mind when I feel like I'm myself and like with my people. And stuff. And also just like the relationship with the cello and the piano and how they can be like discordant or like in tune, and how that could represent different parts of the year. But yeah, I think that's maybe something related to that?

Nanette McGuinness  05:16
Yeah, it sounds very interesting. Kind of... a musical journey through apprentice adulthood.

Lucy Chen  05:22
Yeah

Nanette McGuinness  05:23
That sounds great! Do you have a working title? You can say no.

Lucy Chen  05:27
No. [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  05:28
[laughs]

Lucy Chen  05:30
I was gonna... I was thinking about because for Luna Lab when I was in Luna Lab, yeah, just last year. And the piece I wrote for that was called "Seventeen," and it was about how the age 17 is also a very special age, because it's right on the brink of like childhood and adulthood. As you can tell, I think about time passing a lot. So maybe this piece could be like a little owed to that piece, and because now I'm even more on the, I guess, the adulthood side, or it was my first taste of it. So maybe I can even, like, reference some themes from there, or, I don't know, do some sort of connection, but also make it new, because that's metaphorically what happened to me too. Like...

Nanette McGuinness  06:15
Right.

Lucy Chen  06:15
...to experience [laughing].

Nanette McGuinness  06:16
Right [laughs] Yeah, makes me think of... there's a Janis Ian song called "At Seventeen" I think... you could check that out.

Lucy Chen  06:22
yeah
Nanette McGuinness  06:22
Not for your piece for us, but since you like music from those eras. [laughs]

Lucy Chen  06:26
Yeah, I thought about the age 17 because so many like songs reference that age, so it must be special.

Nanette McGuinness  06:33
Yeah! Well, at least culturally, in terms of in where adulthood is set to happen for us, 17 is that brink moment.

Lucy Chen  06:41
Yeah

Nanette McGuinness  06:43
That's very interesting. Yeah. And as far as the title goes, almost every composer I know the even if they come up with a working title, the title may well change in the process. And an awful lot of them say, "I won't know the title 'till I'm finished, and then I know the title." So...

Lucy Chen  07:01
Yeah, that's usually what I do. I have to. I usually don't come up with the title until I finish the piece.

Nanette McGuinness  07:09
This actually leads well into the next question I wanted to ask you, which was... Do you have any mentors, interests or influences you'd like to share with us? And you know, if you'd like to kind of lead into that, you can certainly talk about your Luna Composition Lab experience, or your mentor there. So, tell me.

Lucy Chen  07:27
Yeah, um, I think... I have a lot of key mentors throughout my life, and Luna Lab was definitely such a special experience because I think just the whole, like community of like women and like gender non-conforming people, and not just like male, male-dominated like environment, because usually composing, like music, composition is kind of like that. And I, I didn't even know many composers, because it's, well, I went to like a regular public high school, so it wasn't like an art school. And then the only composer I knew was this other guy in my grade. And then I knew my conductor, who was also a guy. But just being able to be with, like, a bunch of women and having such a supportive community, it was, like, very special, and especially, like, my mentor, Nina Shekhar, she was, she was very just, like, anytime I had, like, some sort of question about, like, Oh, what do I do with this music part? Or even just a question about, like, how do I balance music and like, senior year of high school, because that was also kind of difficult. She would just be able to answer that, and she was also just, like very comfortable to like talk with we would just chat during our sessions, and she would be very supportive and give really good ideas. And then I think, getting to meet Missy (Mazzoli) during the actual Luna Lab. That was really awesome too. Like, I just loved her energy, and she just seemed like she is, like, super self confident, and just loves her work. And I remember once she took all the composers to her house in Brooklyn, and they had, like, a little concert there. And I was like, wow, this is what the music community feels like. It's just like, very warm. We're all just together and, like, making music. And, yeah, it was just very special. And I think that was the first time I was really immersed in, like, a composer community, especially one that's females and, like, non binary people. And it was just like, very special. And I was like, Wow. I really want to be in spaces like this as I get older. So yeah, that was one, one very special experience. And some other mentors I have a lot, but I mentioned that I had been studying piano since I was four. So I actually had the same piano teacher from the age of four to my last lesson, like a week before I moved into college.

Nanette McGuinness  10:09
Wow

Lucy Chen  10:10
Yeah. And she, she was like, well, obviously starting piano at age four, that was my first experience with music ever. She, her name is Rosita Mang. She was just such a, like, supportive and nice and also very funny teacher, while also not letting me off the hook too easily, which I think was good for my growth. But yeah, during lessons, she would just always stress like to don't play because you want to win this competition or be the best like, out of other people. Like, don't have a competition mindset. Just really play because you love the music and because you want to just play the best that you can. Like, don't worry about other people. And I think a lot of piano teachers don't really do that, and that's why a lot of kids I know that played piano for such a long time, they just immediately quit after getting out of high school. But I think the reason I didn't, and the reason I started even playing violin and studying composition and the continuing piano and composition in college is because of her, and she actually just passed away when I started college, which was very sad, but I it just remember more about how much she's impacted me, and I think she is, like, the biggest reason I am pursuing music.

Nanette McGuinness  11:36
Wow

Lucy Chen  11:37
Yeah

Nanette McGuinness  11:37
I'm very sorry for your loss that... that's a very special relationship, and clearly she made her mark on you in a wonderful way.

Lucy Chen  11:46
Yeah. So in a way she will never leave, because she's always here when I'm being passionate about music.

Nanette McGuinness  11:55
Yeah, yeah, that she wanted you to do your personal best and let what you felt and heard in the music out instead of an external norm, I guess the best way to say it, yeah... Yeah, and Missy and Nina are both great. Nina is one of the composers we interviewed.

Lucy Chen  12:16
Oh, awesome.

Nanette McGuinness  12:17
[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]