In an increasingly divided world, award-winning composer Shih-Hui Chen has made it a mission to use her music -- sometimes with the help of other elements, like food -- to highlight the universal human experience and help bridge borders.
On this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Jeremy Olivier sits down with Chen to discuss her journey as a Taiwanese American composer and the stories she has been trying to tell through her music pieces.
On this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Jeremy Olivier sits down with Chen to discuss her journey as a Taiwanese American composer and the stories she has been trying to tell through her music pieces.
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00:00Welcome to Zoom In Zoom Out, your global look at stories from Taiwan.
00:15I'm Jeremy Olivier.
00:17The social impact of conspiracy theories, the struggle of immigrants to reconcile their
00:21competing identities, and the sentimental longing for things lost to time, these are
00:26just a few of the themes explored in the mini-works of Shih-Hui Chen, an award-winning
00:31Taiwanese-American composer based in Houston, Texas.
00:35By blending elements of Taiwanese indigenous and nanguan music with Western contemporary
00:39composition, Shih-Hui's pieces serve as a bridge between her birthplace and her adoptive
00:43home.
00:44Shih-Hui is currently in Taiwan workshopping one of her newest pieces, titled Three Pinches
00:49of Salt.
00:50Shih-Hui, we're very lucky to have you on the show today.
00:53I am so honored to be on your show today.
00:56So let's first zoom in, what is the story that you're trying to tell with Three Pinches
01:00of Salt?
01:01My previous two works, it's about identity, and then another one's about preservation
01:07of the environment and language and culture.
01:10And it's somehow really heavy, and I feel like I want something fun about food, right?
01:16And so this is about preservation of food, and as I develop with the director and the
01:21creative team in Taiwan, we gradually, it's about human connections.
01:27In this story, there's a son and mother, and son tried to make the kimchi, the pickles,
01:34reproducing the mother's, the way she made it.
01:37So there's death and life, and then how we pickle food because we wanted to preserve
01:42it, and then we bring something decay to life and nutrient our body.
01:47As I'm beginning to work on this theme, I was very surprised, I don't know why I was
01:53surprised, that kimchi is universal, and wine is universal, and this is back to the idea
02:02about the identity that we are all the same.
02:07We should not think about it's your culture, your food, your pickle, my pickle.
02:13And we human being in different culture has an ancient way of preserving food, and we
02:18should work together.
02:20So it's back to my very heavy topic, and before that, about identity, my opera is about bringing
02:26people together rather than dividing people.
02:29Wonderful.
02:30You know, of course, as you've been saying, there's this strong food element in this piece,
02:35and I think in one iteration there was a food tasting, which is not something you'd normally
02:39see in a classical music concert.
02:43So what was your motivation for incorporating?
02:45Well, actually we do, right?
02:47There's always reception.
02:49There's always reception after concert, right?
02:51But it's like separate, you know, there's concert, there's a reception, there are two
02:55separate things.
02:56What would happen if we bring them together, right?
02:59And then, of course, we want to bring the preservative food, the kimchi, this pickle
03:02thing, and make people aware the wine you are tasting and the pickle you are eating
03:07or is in the food.
03:09It's universal, it's ancient and old, and it's all cultural, right?
03:14And as I discovered these interesting facts in our different culture and life, I hope
03:21that the audience can discover that as well.
03:23So like many of your other works, I mean, this is essentially music theatre, it has
03:40a very strong visual element.
03:41So why is it important for your audiences to see the messages and the stories in your
03:48pieces like this one, rather than just hear them?
03:51Wow, we just went through a pandemic, right?
03:54We're not going back.
03:56I was in Zoom for two, two and a half years, and I'm so used to this visual element too.
04:02And I feel I still write abstract music, I just finished one premiere in Chicago.
04:08But the storytelling has a lot to offer and to connect to the audience.
04:13My music, I was told that it's avant-garde and new music, and it's hard to listen.
04:17But then if you have storytelling to convey what you're trying to say, I think you can
04:23bring the audience into your life and vice versa.
04:27So I think storytelling is a really good way of connecting with the audience.
04:33And a question I want to ask right after that is, you know, as somebody who was trained
04:37in classical music, I'm curious how you come up with your pieces.
04:42Do you hear the music first?
04:44Do you visualize it?
04:46How does it come to you?
04:47If you have a piece of abstract music, I hear that first.
04:51I know the whole piece before I even put it down, because structure is so important.
04:56But with the storytelling pieces, you need to think about the concept first.
05:00I mean, what are you trying to tell?
05:03For example, this idea of food preservation.
05:06It's not just eating food.
05:07Underneath is you want to tell people, hey, we are the same, you know, German or Japanese
05:12or Taiwanese.
05:14We all have a similar kind of culture in preserving food.
05:18So let's work together, our world is going crazy, divided and, you know, fighting and
05:24this and that.
05:25And as a musician, what can I do?
05:28I go demonstration, of course, but I think my forte is to use my music as a vehicle to
05:34tell the audience, tell the people, hey, have you thought about this?
05:38What do you think about this?
05:40And they might agree, they might disagree, but that's okay.
05:43I see that as a form of expression for myself, it's important that people be aware of a musician
05:52can be also active and be part of a society.
05:56Right.
05:57So, I mean, you know, the world's going crazy.
06:00And so you've come up with a number of pieces that are imbued with a social message.
06:06Another one that you debuted just recently is another music theater piece called Birds
06:11Are Real, which may sound familiar to some of our viewers.
06:15Can you tell us about that one?
06:17The full title is actually called Birds Are Real, Ambushed From Ten Directions.
06:24If you know Chinese pipa piece, Ambushed From Ten Directions are a pipa piece depicting
06:30the war between two generals in Han Dynasty.
06:34Those days weapon is a sword and arrows, maybe, but nowadays our weapon is not that
06:43at all.
06:44It's misinformation.
06:45We are bombasted by all this information.
06:49You don't even know it's real or not real.
06:50For example, there's a conspiracy in the United States, they call Birds Aren't Real.
06:57When I first heard that, I was like, wow, this is fascinating.
07:01We human beings are so far away from the nature that we actually believe that birds
07:07aren't real.
07:08I am sort of like satire and say that I want them to know birds aren't real.
07:12So my music begin with the birds guiding tour, and then you walk into the stage and then
07:17you have the birds call, and then the musicians, they were storytelling.
07:22We also invited Donghua Piying Jituan, the shadow puppets.
07:26From that, we make a visual.
07:28When I talked to director and the visual artist, we need to use AI.
07:33Just right around that time, Sora became available, right?
07:37You don't even need to program anymore.
07:39You just say what you want to say, and then the Sora spit out this image.
07:42We did not use Sora because that's not yet available to most people, but other AI platform
07:50is available.
07:51So I think it's very fitting for us to use AI to collate these different images and different
07:56things and it's not real.
07:58When we premiered in Houston this October, I think people were fascinated.
08:03It's just a way to express myself outside of just only abstract music and to have a
08:09broadened base to reach to other disciplinary, and let's do things together and to help to
08:15shape a better world if we can.
08:29So let's zoom out now and go back to the beginning.
08:31I want to talk about your journey to where you are now.
08:35What drew you to composition?
08:37How did you know you wanted to primarily be the one writing music rather than performing
08:41it?
08:42Well, it's very easy.
08:43I don't want to practice.
08:44You and me both.
08:48I just found it fascinating, the creativity, the creation of a new thing that has never
08:55happened before.
08:57And I wish I would practice, but you only have 24 hours a day.
09:01Using music, creating something that's never done before and to share with the world, that's
09:09fascinating for me.
09:11That's the reason why I become a composer.
09:13Music composition has historically been kind of seen as primarily Western or Eurocentric
09:19domain.
09:21Did you face any challenges as an immigrant from Asia and bringing many of the region's
09:26traditions to your craft?
09:28In the beginning, when I first went to the States, I did not write any of these Asian
09:35elements in there because I actually was a totally Western trained musician.
09:41When I was in Taiwan, I do not learn any of Asian Taiwanese music at all.
09:46That's the education still to today, not only in Taiwan, in China, in Japan, in Korea.
09:51If you're studying Western music, you study only Western music.
09:54So when I went to the States, I continued the path that if I'm coming here to study
10:00Western music, I want to write the best avant-garde music.
10:03And so I was rewarded by commissions and awards, and that seems to be fine.
10:09But at some point, I found myself dissatisfied.
10:12I mean, who am I?
10:13This music has no ounce of blood of Asian, and you don't even know this person was born
10:20in Taiwan and has educated in Taiwan, lived in Taiwan for such a long time.
10:25So I made an effort to go back to study my heritage, and I actually applied at Fulbright.
10:32That's 15 years ago already.
10:34Came back to Taiwan.
10:35I studied nangguan.
10:36I played pipa, and I played the sing.
10:39And then I also was affiliated with Academia Sinica, and I worked with Hu Tai-li, a very
10:45famous anthropologist.
10:47Then after that, there's no turning back.
10:49Ever since then, every project is always relating to the experience I had 15 years ago.
10:55I think when I was younger, I cared more about people, this commission, award, or this Western
11:03audience.
11:04But at this point, I feel like I'm more interested in my expression.
11:09I want to offer the world my point of view, which is neither Chinese, or neither Taiwanese,
11:15nor United States.
11:16So neither East nor West, but it's both West and the East as well.
11:22So it's creating some kind of a language, new language that's uniquely that I feel comfortable.
11:28That's my own.
11:39My American Bond girl.
11:43My American Bond girl.
11:47American Bond girl.
11:50My American Bond girl.
11:54Multinational.
11:55How beautiful.
11:56Multinational.
11:57Mutual.
11:58Mutual.
11:59Identity.
12:00How beautiful.
12:01Now that you do kind of combine these two worlds inside of your pieces, so my curiosity
12:13is just what differences have you observed between how audiences in the U.S. and Taiwan
12:18receive works like Three Pinches of Salt?
12:22My performance is mostly in the United States.
12:24I have not a lot of concerts here.
12:27I don't know.
12:28But I envision, I imagine that for Taiwan, when they talk about Three Pinches of Salt
12:37or these kind of something that they feel familiar, they probably feel like, oh, this
12:42is very close to me.
12:45But in the United States, they might be looking in a different, you know, it's a different
12:48way of looking at Asian, right?
12:50But the whole point is not dividing the audience in the United States and Taiwan, right?
12:56This is our human experience that we should be able to all feel, to understand about,
13:03for example, this mother's funeral.
13:06And we all feel like when mother passed away, the son trying to replicate memory by making
13:13the pickle that she used to make.
13:15This is something universal.
13:17I'm also making a huge effort.
13:18I want something that could be cross-cultural, trans-cultural, rather than like, oh, there's
13:24this or that, right?
13:26This is a world that we should be able to have empathy and sympathy and understanding
13:31of each other, rather than dividing.
13:34This part is Taiwan.
13:37This part is America.
13:38I think it'd be nicer when we, you don't know which one is going to what.
13:43And then we have experience.
13:44We have similar experience among all of us.
13:48Well, that was a really interesting conversation, Shi Hui.
13:51Thank you so much for joining us on the show today.
13:53Thank you so much for having me.
13:56It's fascinating because I usually use my music to tell people all my thoughts.
14:00And today, using the words and language to tell people what I saw, that's a wonderful
14:05opportunity.
14:07Well, I'm so glad we got to catch you while you're in Taiwan.
14:09Yes, same here.
14:11This has been Zoom In Zoom Out.
14:13For more stories from Taiwan Plus, you can follow us on social media.
14:16I'm Jeremy Olivier.
14:17Take care and see you next time.