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Huang Ruo, Senior Conservatory Composition Major, Releases CD of Original Works, "Music of Huang Ruo"
Story by Claire
Chase
Photo by Linda
Shockley
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At
age 23, senior Conservatory composition major Huang Ruo is
already known to the music worlds of two continents as a
promising composer and brilliant young mind looking toward a
new millennium of music-making. In his native China, Huang's
work has been broadcast on Chinese television and featured
on numerous occasions at the annual Spring Festival of
Shanghai. In Switzerland, the young composer was awarded the
1995 Henry Mancini Award at the prestigious International
Film and Music Festival. His work has been spotlighted on
Radio-Canada and Radio-Shanghai, honored by the American
Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and
presented at noted conferences and symposiums in Boston, Ann
Arbor, Aspen, Tempe and Cleveland.
Huang recently released a CD recording of nine original works written from 1991-1999. The CD, titled "Music of Huang Ruo," which features Oberlin student performers, will be available at the Co-op Bookstore at the end of November ((800/860-3741; coopbks@aol.com).
With guidance and encouragement from his father, also a composer, Huang began both piano and composition studies at an early age. "I started to write songs - pop songs, art songs, children's songs - when I was about four or five. My father urged me to express everything I was able to feel at that age through simple music. My composition was very free, very natural: like speech, like walking. I never thought, 'I am composing,'…I just wrote. Poetry, lyrics, melodies were all the same to me," reminisces Huang.
At age 12, Huang was accepted to the pre-college division of the Shanghai Conservatory, where he began composition studies with the celebrated Chinese composer Deng Erbo. "Mr. Erbo was a wonderful teacher for me at that time--he taught me the structural and theoretical aspects of composition through musical example, not through textbooks. He told me that if I am an apple seed, I will grow into an apple tree. In other words, if I am an apple seed I will not, and should not, grow into Mahler or Beethoven, or Erbo, or anyone else. He wanted me to become myself, from the very beginning."
While at the Shanghai Conservatory, Huang studied both Eastern and Western compositional techniques and musical philosophies. "I developed my own voice as a Chinese composer, as one who was born and raised in that part of the world with different experiences of music, sound, culture and life. But my voice is informed by my experience with Western music as well. The idea in the end is that when you finally come out of your shell, there is no difference between the two worlds. We are all members of a world village, though everyone must speak with their own accent, their own voice."
At
age 18, Huang came to the United States and enrolled in an
English as a Second Language program at the University of
California at Los Angeles. He struggled with the language
and adapted with some difficulty to the culture of the
large, foreign city. "But I got very close to this new
world, and I lived in many places, tried many new ways of
life. All this had an enormous effect on my
music."
Huang began his studies with Professor of Composition and Music Theory Randolph Coleman at Oberlin Conservatory in the fall of 1996. Over the past three years his work has been performed with great success by the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra, the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. Ruo also teaches a popular EXCO course, Composing Music, open to students of all levels, from both the College and the Conservatory.
"I have come to learn that music is about a person experiencing life and reacting to it. I try to tell my composition students this: that music is part of nature, that nature is part of the world. I try to tell people how very simple it is. Music surrounds us, it is everywhere. Our body is music. And we cannot live without it."
Huang's new CD is a compilation of much of the work he has created in America during the last five years. "My listeners, I hope, will be able to view a little bit of the history of my life, how it has changed and molded my music. The individual pieces on this CD are very different from one another; Each piece was written in a different time, for different reasons. I believe that the truth of music lies in its reason to exist. Every note of my music has a reason for being there, and has a story to tell."
MUSIC OF HUANG RUO (b. 1976)
TWO PIECES
FOR ORCHESTRA 1) I. Prelude For
Orchestra (1998) 03:31 performed by the Cleveland
Chamber Symphony with Edwin London 2) II. Fanfare 1998--for
Orchestra (1998) 03:15 performed by the Oberlin
Chamber Orchestra with Tim Weiss Composer's
Remarks: "Two Pieces for Orchestra is
a combination of two pieces which are contrary to
one another in style, orchestration, density and
color. I try to use orchestral sound to describe
the philosophy of Ying and Yang, and how they
change and balance each other." 3)
DRAMA
THEATER I: A Q (1998) 8:08 (for string octet) Audio
Excerpts: Composer's
Remarks: Drama Theater I:A Q is based
on a Chinese novel "The True Story of A Q (A Q is a
tragic character's name) written by Mr. Lu
Xun. Excerpt 1--"But presently he
changed defeat into victory. Raising his right hand
he slapped his own face hard, twice, so that it
tingled with pain. After this slapping his heart
felt lighter, for it seemed as if the one who had
given the slap was himself, the one slapped the
other self, and soon it was just as if he beaten
someone else--in spite of the fact that his face
was still tingling. He lay down satisfied that he
had gained the victory. Soon he was
asleep." Excerpt 2--"A Q was lifted on
to an uncovered cart….In front were a number
of soldiers and militiamen shouldering foreign
rifles, and on both sides were crowds of gaping
spectators…Suddenly it occurred to him, Can I
be going to have my head cut off? Panic seized him
and everything turned dark before his
eyes…Although he felt frightened some of the
time, the rest of the time he was quite calm. It
seemed to him that in this world probably it was
the fate of everybody at some time to have his head
cut off…" Excerpt 3--"At that instant
his thoughts revolved again like a whirlwind. Four
years before, at the foot of a mountain, he had met
a hungry wolf which had followed at a set distance,
wanting to eat him. He had nearly died of fright,
but luckily he happened to have a knife in his had
which gave him the courage to get back to
Weizhuang. He had never forgotten that wolf's eyes,
fierce yet cowardly, gleaming like two
will-o-the-wisps, as if boring into him from a
distance. Now he saw eyes more terrible even than
the wolf's: dull yet penetrating eyes that having
devoured his words still seemed eager to devour
something beyond his flesh and blood. And these
eyes kept following him at a set distance. These
eyes seemed to have merged into onw, biting into
his soul. 'Help! Help'" 4) SIWAY--Four
Dimensions (1997) 11:53 (for three piccolos and
conductor) Audio
Excerpts: Composer's
Remarks: "SIWAY--Four Dimensions--I've
combined Western and Eastern styles of music to
explore the natural world through dimensions, using
height as the range, length as the duration, width
as the dynamic, and time as both sound and silence.
The piece was written for three piccolos that
represent the first three dimensions and a
conductor who controls time: the sound and the
silence." 5) BEING... (1999) 07:53 (for viola and clarinet) Composer's
Remarks: "BEING… is originally
written for Viola and Alto Saxophone. On this
recording is a version I arranged for viola and
clarinet. Everything in the world has its simple
side. For me, nothing more meaningful than simply
and freely existing. The important thing is not
about being what and where, but 'being'
itself." 6) SEASONS (1998) 05:57 (for mezzo-soprano and
piano) Composer's
Remarks: "SEASONS is based on a cycle
of haiku by Basho. It is about the nature of four
seasons:" What voice The winter sun A petal shower 7) LEFT--Postlude-- (1999) 03:52 (for piano, left) Composer's
Remarks: "Have you ever lost something
which is very important in your life, but at the
same moment, you have something remaining in your
heart?" LEFT has three meanings:
8) IF TO
LIVE, TO.... (1996) 05:00 (for cello) Audio
Excerpts: Composer's
Remarks: "IF TO LIVE, TO…was
inspired by how I understand and taste life. I
wrote it during a time of struggle. I believe that
there's always a way to achieve or accomplish
something, but it may not always be easy. In this
piece, I hope you can hear how struggle sounds, how
the effort to move beyond the struggle sounds, and
how resolution sounds. Through it all, it's
important to have a belief, a faith that the future
will bring an understanding of how to face the
difficulties. The trick, of course, is to face the
struggle and learn from it." 9) YU
HUO (1991) 06:40 (for violin and piano) Composer's
Remarks: "YU HUO is a landscape of my
home town, Hai Nan Island." TOTAL TIME:
56:13
Claude Sim (violin I), Felix Petit, (violin II),
Wendy Richman (viola I), Elizabeth Freivogel (viola
II), Alexander Waterman (cello I), Kivie
Cahn-Lipman (cello II), Mike O'Connell (double bass
I), Nikki Bartniki (double bass II), David Schotzko
(tam-tam)
Lisa Jacklitsch (piccolo I), Becky Weidman (piccolo
II), Julia Taylor
(piccolo III), Huang Ruo (conductor)
Duke Lee (viola), Kate Bolton (clarinet)
Julie Cross (mezzo-soprano), Huang Ruo
(piano)
I don't know
which tree is comes from
that fragrance
what song,
spider, in the Autumn wind
on the horse back
my frozen shadow
of Mountain roses,
and the sound of rapids
Huang Ruo (piano)
Alex Waterman (cello)
Esther Noh (violin), Thomas Rosenkranz
(piano)
