Lunar Module with Isabelle Tseng - Part 2

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 141: Lunar Module with Isabelle Tseng - 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 Isabelle Tseng, who we spoke to in May 2024. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more, check out her music here: https://isabelleztseng.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/16550195

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

Don't miss America pianist extraordinaire Dale Tsang when she performs a piano recital featuring 11 works chosen in E4TT's latest call for scores. She'll play not one but two performances online and on both sides of the Bay, in Berkeley on Feb. 22 and in San Francisco on Mar. 2.

Chapters

• 0:42 In this week's Lunar Module episode, we continue talking to E4TT Luna Composition Lab Call for Scores' winner Isabelle Tseng who we spoke to in May 2024.
• 0:54 So before you work with Veronika, were you kind of leaning in that story based imagery direction, or was that brand new to you?
• 2:55 Now, you're a rising sophomore, you're 19, but do you have any idea where you're going next, what you want to do?
• 4:51 Are there other aspects of music that interest you with all the other things that you're doing?

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 Call for Scores' winner Isabelle Tseng [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] who we spoke to in May 2024.

Nanette McGuinness  00:33

So before you work with Veronika, were you kind of leaning in that story based imagery direction, or was that brand new to you?

Isabelle Tseng  00:44

I think it was always a little bit like that, but not quite so it wasn't as picturesque. It was more like an emotion thing. Yeah, I once wrote this piece called "Gardyloo", which is a word that people used to yell when they threw trash out the window. And then I think that piece was a little bit kind of about, like a feeling of disgust, and it was like a very like emotions based feeling. But again, everybody's disgust feels different. And everybody's kind of like horror feels different, because the second movement of my piece, called "Gardyloo", is called the fenestration, and it's a pedestrian who's walking down the street. Here's "Gardyloo" knows that trash is about to come down right on top of him, and he has no idea where it is, right? So, so at the end of the day, I think, like, it was a little bit more emotions based. And in a way, I think I'm able to paint the picture of my own emotions well, because it's kind of what I feel and to each their own right. But I feel like, in terms of pictures, I didn't have a very strong sense of, okay, I'm like, writing a joyful piece about somebody's childhood. Let's put in a bouncing teddy bear, right? Like, in some ways that that didn't really come across in my music. And I feel like, after working with Veronika, I have a lot more solo than an idea of what exactly like consists of a thing in itself, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  02:22

Right. So yeah, I would say the mood is what I was getting and that you learned specificity...

Isabelle Tseng  02:22

Yeah

Nanette McGuinness  02:22

...and to hone that specificity, that's very cool. Now, you're a rising sophomore, you're 19, but do you have any idea where you're going next, what you want to do?

Isabelle Tseng  02:42

I'm not entirely sure, but the current moment, I definitely want to keep composing. I think like it's definitely something that I really love, like, filling my free time with because, like, school is really stressful. I come home and I get to, like, kind of play around with different mediums. And I feel like it's a really, like, awesome experience to kind of see like one like, I feel like music is a really raw form of communication. And like through, for example, I feel like you can have a chamber music group of like four people speaking of completely four different languages, and then everybody kind of has, like, the universal idea of, okay, like, this is what we want to do. And if they're like, even if there's like a there's even like a musical discussion going on, and I feel like, in a way, that's a dialog that I want to be a part of. At the current moment, at school, though, I think I'm currently pre-law.

Nanette McGuinness  03:45

That's okay. You're doing Econ, but you're pre-law and you love composing. Why not? I think smart people have more arrows to their bow that they want to explore, to mix metaphors really disastrously.

Isabelle Tseng  03:57

[laughs] Yeah, I think it's just really fun talking to people. And pre-law really, like, has a lot of opportunities for that, and kind of getting to know everybody's stories, and talking to everybody and going, like, Oh, you have a like, it seems like we're all people. We all, like, end up in like, similar places, but everybody comes from like, a completely different background. Yeah, as similar as they may seem, they're always different. So I think it's always really fun to talk to everybody, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  04:25

Right, the commonalities, but the devil is in the details, right?

Isabelle Tseng  04:28

[laughs] Yeah

Nanette McGuinness  04:30

Are there other aspects of music that interest you with all the other things that you're doing?

Isabelle Tseng  04:37

I play in the orchestra, but I also compose, but I recently feel like genre wise, I have found a lot of like inspiration because I recently took this class called the tonality of music with Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton. And it's like a class that walks through, like music theory in a bit of a different lens. I wouldn't, yeah, I think it's like a different approach to a different approach to kind of viewing music, analyzing music. And we went through a lot of different genres, even like jazz and like rock even. And I think personally, as a person who was possibly trained as a kid at the at first, I feel like my ear was, like, untrained in this angle. I could not, like, analyze it properly, but like taking a closer look at a lot of this type of music that's a bit more, I think improvisational, I think was important. And kind of like showing me that, like there are a lot more facets to kind of composition, not just like sitting down and like writing. And I felt that like the improvisational idea and kind of manipulating like shapes in the most like present form, like right in front of an audience is something that I really think is really inspirational in a way, and freeing in another way. Like, while it looks like kind of like regulated on paper, it's like very, just very free. Like I read, of course, like her "Law of Debussy" and then I was like, wow, this is kind of like how it was created, in a way, and I found it really cool. So I think recently, musically speaking, I kind of unlocked the door to a little bit more of, like the flowy, flowy, flowy vibe of music. And I think that's something I'll definitely explore.

Nanette McGuinness  06:43

Yeah, no, I see what you're saying that you were trained in what we think of as the classical, which is, it's on the paper. We write it on the paper, and we do our best to do exactly what's on the paper, but that's more a modern, in my opinion, construct of what classical music is, because if you look at the Baroque there was all sorts of improvisation going on all around in ornamentation and a number of directions. But even if you look at the concerti with... and the cadenzas in the classical period and so forth, there was all sorts of stuff going on for people to do that wasn't written on the paper. So it's good that you got that freeing experience, because there is space for that in classical music. So yeah, but okay, so it blew your mind and opened your horizons.

Isabelle Tseng  07:34

Yeah

Nanette McGuinness  07:35

Very cool. And that's good. That's what a teacher is supposed to do in a good way. So that's nice.

Nanette McGuinness  07:39

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure and a special thank you to our guest, Isabelle Tseng 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 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]