{"id":271647,"date":"2022-05-23T14:45:35","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T20:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/?p=271647"},"modified":"2022-05-25T08:09:46","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T14:09:46","slug":"interview-wang-jie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/interview-wang-jie\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Composer Wang Jie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, Music Director Peter Oundjian sat down with composer Wang Jie to discuss her <em>Flying on the Scaly Backs of Our Mountains<\/em>, a brand new piece of music which t<a href=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/concert\/stravinskys-firebird-clarinet-star-anthony-mcgill\/\">he Festival will premiere on August 4, 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the interview or read the full transcription below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Interview: Composer Wang Jie &amp; Music Director Peter Oundjian\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HZ6tMSPbS6w?feature=oembed\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter Oundjian:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Hi, everybody, welcome to this, and hi particularly to Wang Jie, wonderful to see you and to have you here. Thanks for taking the time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Wang Jie:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Hi, Peter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I&#8217;m just fascinated always by what happened in China after the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cultural_Revolution\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cultural Revolution<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> ended, because you are one of many people that I know personally, just fantastic musicians, that sort of came about after that period. And I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;d all like to know just a little bit about it, what it was like growing up in Shanghai, right? You grew up in Shanghai?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, yes. Shanghai, which is like the New York of China.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The one city in China that I have not&#8230; Well, not the one, but one of the main cities I&#8217;ve never been to. So I would love to go one day. But it&#8217;s a fascinating thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And I just want to say, first of all, that we&#8217;re all very, very excited about this <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/concert\/stravinskys-firebird-clarinet-star-anthony-mcgill\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">premiere<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. I heard your music for the first time about three years ago, and I found it so compelling as does everybody else in any case. So I hope that everybody can make it to the final week <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/concert\/stravinskys-firebird-clarinet-star-anthony-mcgill\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">program<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> when we do this premiere.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But tell us just a little bit about what was the atmosphere, how did you get involved in music coming out of this Cultural Revolution, where it was basically illegal to play a musical instrument that anybody could hear, right? So tell us a little bit about your beginnings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So what a great way to rekindle some of those moments, which actually I would say that it&#8217;s always been alive in my consciousness. From the early 80s, because Shanghai just came out of the cultural revolution and my father, who came out of the winning class, had an opportunity for a college education. And of course his favorite composer was Claude Debussy and he had to go to the Shanghai Conservatory, he could just study with the best of the best of the nation at the time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So by early 80s, of course it was very, very expensive to buy a piano because it was just not available. So I began my music education and my father was already the music director of an arts institution the size of Lincoln Center. But he was the music director, conductor, and composer for this district that is literally bigger than the five boroughs of New York City together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And he was in charge of the music life of all the sectors\u2014the military, the agriculture, the industry, import, export, education, farmers, you name it. So I spent my childhood just kind of shadowing my dad, who&#8217;s this conductor, a music director. And he started this youth orchestra, he gave an instrument to anybody who had the inkling to study music, but could not afford it. And I actually was one of these kids and I just grew up\u2014since I was four years old&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I don&#8217;t know about everybody else, but I&#8217;m wondering how did your father manage to be a conductor and a musician when most of his formative years were during the Cultural Revolution? Tell us about that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hmm. So there&#8217;s a lot of stuff that went unspoken and still remained unspoken up until he died. I am sure there was some music making training during the Cultural Revolution where being that he was the winning class, he had all the opportunities, which speaks to the importance of having opportunities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And he rose out of the most unexpected environment. There was no one in my father&#8217;s side of the family who were musicians. But he just had this love for Western classical music. But the more taboo it was maybe made it a lot more intriguing for him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So immediately after the revolution, he got the best training and he was very fast to study. And before you knew it, he was conducting choruses everywhere. Chorus was very readily available. And then he learned to conduct a youth orchestra, and because there was no other orchestra except you have to make your own orchestra from whoever&#8217;s in the community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I think I took from him that it doesn&#8217;t matter where you come from, but it&#8217;s the ear, it&#8217;s the passion, it&#8217;s just following that and just keeping your eyes on the ball, and he was very much like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So you talk about \u201cear\u201d and that brings me to something else. By the way, I&#8217;m assuming you don&#8217;t have any siblings, am I correct?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nope! First year of single child policy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right, exactly. But you talk about \u201cear.\u201d I have observed that pretty much every Chinese musician that I know has perfect pitch.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You have perfect pitch?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, yeah. And my theory of this is that your language has perfect pitch already so that everybody actually has perfect pitch. And I don&#8217;t speak almost any Mandarin, but I have experimented with just a phrase or two and asked people to speak them to me independently. And the girls just speak them in the same pitches as the boys, but just an octave higher. So it seems to me that if you change the intonation of what you&#8217;re saying, you actually probably change the meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Very true.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So tell me if there&#8217;s some truth to that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Very true. My name has music to it, which is why it was a pretty difficult adjustment in terms of my oral world to come to the United States because of the unfortunate alphabetical translation of my name, which doesn&#8217;t really translate the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">music<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of my name.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was named in my local dialect, which is Shanghainese. Shanghainese is a very different music from Mandarin. And we have, for example, at least 2,500 years of a cultural history that is kind of steeped in this particular dialect. And I&#8217;m talking about culture because language and especially dialect affect our thinking quite a bit. So my name actually sounds better in Shanghainese than Mandarin. So here&#8217;s my\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So here we go. First, you&#8217;re going to say it in Shanghainese, okay?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay, ready?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then give us Mandarin. Go ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes. So in Shanghainese, my name is [pronouncing] <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wang Jie,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> so it&#8217;s a tenuto and a staccato, right? And it&#8217;s a slur on top, Wang Jie.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay. Everybody after me, \u201cWang Jie.\u201d Oh, I can&#8217;t hear you. It&#8217;s okay. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs]<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And then, okay, what about in Mandarin?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, then it becomes [pronouncing] <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wang Jie<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh my goodness. That&#8217;s incredible. So when you decided your American spelling, you kind of implied the Mandarin by putting J-I-E instead of just J-I, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because this was the official spelling and that&#8217;s how it&#8217;s spelled on my passport and I didn&#8217;t want to change my name. So it came with it. In fact, the same characters in a different system, for example, the Taiwanese system would spell it differently. And in the pre-1949 system, it would also be spelled differently. But it just happened that post-1949, that&#8217;s the spelling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Incredible. Okay. So now through your teenage years, did you always have the idea that coming to America would be exciting?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, I did not. And actually, this is quite\u2014I always knew I was going to be in music in one way or another. Actually my high school year is the subject of a documentary because I was actually kept away from music and it just kind of, I was so pent up. I was like, &#8220;I am going to just devote my life and now I know what it tastes like when life is without music.&#8221; And I&#8217;m not being sentimental here, Peter, this is truly what happened.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was in a high school boarding school and I was away from my piano and I had been playing the piano, practicing the piano as a professional musician for four to six hours a day since I was four years old and now all of a sudden it was taken away from me. It was something that I had to find my way back to, even if it means that I had to end every supportive network that was available to me at the time and I took that risk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And I think that mentality, and\u2014not that taking risks are enjoyable or\u2026 I&#8217;m not addicted to excitement in that way\u2014but it had to be done. It was not a choice that I don&#8217;t go for it and find out whether I can trust that whoever up there, the muses, liked me enough to keep me in music. So it was quite a journey and I made my way back to Shanghai Conservatory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How long were you at this boarding school then?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Six years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So for six years, you only practiced when you managed to go home in between semesters or whatever?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I had to exercise my flirting skills and I was able to access the music room in my boarding school. So I was always sneaking around and I had a reputation of always being absent for the \u201cstudy time.\u201d It was like a key middle school so the academics were very, very strong and you had to study really, really hard. But I was always like, &#8220;I don&#8217;t get any of this. I just want to go play piano, practicing Mussorgsky and listening to Tchaikovsky symphonies.\u201d And so that was my lifeline. Being with music kept me alive in that almost semi-imprisoned life. I felt very imprisoned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, I went to an English boarding school, so I can relate pretty well to that. I mean, that&#8217;s sort of like boarding school. I mean, the only thing that had stopped by the time I went to boarding schools that you didn&#8217;t get beaten as often as you had in previous times in English boarding schools. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs]<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So it was a little bit more civilized than in earlier times.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But so here&#8217;s what I&#8217;d love to know, I think there&#8217;s sort of two kinds of people who play music, the type that just play an instrument or two or three and just love it and then the type that do that but think, &#8220;I&#8217;d actually like to write some music,&#8221; which has <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">never<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in my life occurred to me that I would write any music. So what happened to you, what age were you when you realized that you had a gift for composition?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, wow. It was probably five. I was five,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> my teacher, his name was Yang Liqing,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0so he was then one of the first musicians [who] ever came back to China but having had a substantial training in Germany. So he was sent away to be trained in Germany and come back to China to be the \u201cleader\u201d in composition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But while he was in Germany, he majored in both composition and piano performance. So my father, of course being my father, he was very charismatic and very well connected and he pulled enough strings to get me into the first studio of <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yang Liquing<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_271649\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-271649\" class=\"wp-image-271649 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Wang-Jie-composer-300x200.jpeg\" alt=\"Composer Wang Jie in a concert hall, appearing at the Colorado Music Festival this summer in Boulder, CO\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-271649\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>photo courtesy of Wang Jie<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So we all knew that he was a composer, but we were there for piano lessons. But to study piano, to study piano performance from a composer meant something else. And I did not discover this until much, much later and that both sides of my musicianship, one is my love for performance and how I am a musician at heart, and then later he did his best to persuade me from not\u2026 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs]<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> He used to say to me, I asked him so many times, &#8220;Dr. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yang<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I want to grow up and be like you. I want to be the greatest composer that is.&#8221; &#8220;Don&#8217;t be a composer,&#8221; he&#8217;s like, &#8220;You will never make money, you&#8217;ll never get famous,&#8221; and anything else easier, nobody cares. Anything else is easier. And then he says, &#8220;You&#8217;re a good looking girl, you have other options, don&#8217;t be a composer. Don&#8217;t become like me.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds like my grandmother. My grandmother always used to say, &#8220;Unless you are going to be Yehudi Menuhi, go into business.&#8221; That&#8217;s what she used to say to me. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs]\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I heard many similar remarks, believe me. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs]\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So you started composing then at a very young age, right? And now you came to America, you came to Manhattan School. So tell us a little bit about how all of that happened. Then of course I&#8217;d want to get to the poetry of Dongpo and this particular piece. But first of all, let&#8217;s hear how the journey took place.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I auditioned. And so at the time I had like two pieces that I felt good enough to show the world for my audition pieces. So I met the dean at the time, David Noon, and he was kind of interviewing prospective students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I sat down with him and I played him my very first piece that I thought was my Opus One. And it was a piano suite titled <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Memories From That First Summer<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. And towards the end, there is a movement that&#8217;s actually a little bit Debussian. And I saw his face just turned into a different color. And he sat there and after the very last chord, which is this [plays], after the very last chord, he sat there, he didn&#8217;t say anything for a few minutes. And then he said to me, &#8220;You should apply.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that was pretty much it. I kind of had an inkling that they liked me, they liked my music, they liked what I was doing. I was very intuitive at the time, still, coming from my teacher who just loved everything, the entire spectrum of the aesthetic approach. He gave me everything to listen to, and the love for Debussy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So now, when you came to Manhattan School, so it&#8217;s an amazing trip to take. I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;d been outside China yet at that stage in your life?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter:<\/b> <b>\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was about just over 20 years ago, right? How was your English and how was it to make this incredible adjustment?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, English was the easier part of my transition, because I&#8217;ve always watched Hollywood movies in Shanghai and I would watch them again, again, again, again, I would like, recite. So I basically learned English by watching movies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so by the time I came here, I was able to make conversations, but reading was difficult because the academic program at Manhattan School was quite rigorous. So, Medieval Renaissance History really nailed me.\u00a0 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs] <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so yeah, speaking, oral communication was not a problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No problem? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Interesting. So let&#8217;s turn a little bit to this poet, Dongpo, because this is someone who I guess must be quite fascinating to you and certainly an inspiration in the case of this piece, is that correct?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To be precise, that idea has kind of developed a little more, if I can say more about it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So the poem is about looking at a mountain and the experience of changing perspectives of looking at a mountain. So I think of writing every piece of mine as a journey of climbing a mountain, metaphorically. I&#8217;m not thinking in my head, &#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m going to climb a mountain,&#8221; not exactly like that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chinese is a language that mainly speaks through metaphors. So even if a poet is talking about a mountain, the poet is not talking about a mountain. The poet is talking about the mountains of life that all of us get to climb or not, you can choose not to climb, many people do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And in this case, Dongpo was talking about the perspective where you cannot gain the silhouette of the mountain if you are inside the mountain, hiking it, inside the mountain, you won&#8217;t have that perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now I think of that as an important feature of the creative process, because what composers do is that we get the privilege to freeze time, we get to put time to a standstill and then we get to just take that slice of time and then make micro decisions. And the decisions, what those decisions mean for me is different from every other composer. And sometimes those decisions, those micro decisions, bear my signature, okay?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A very quick example is, okay, you have an idea, right? So, okay, the idea is [plays opening notes of Beethoven\u2019s Fifth Symphony], everybody knows this idea, okay, you get this idea, but it&#8217;s for orchestra. So who plays what? Who plays what note? So it&#8217;s a good start to have an idea, but we get to freeze the moment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then the challenge is that in every bit of these micro moments, when composers are making these micro decisions, it is like the mind Olympics, because we have to write for instruments we don&#8217;t play. So we&#8217;re talking about an orchestra, let&#8217;s say there&#8217;s 37, 8 different staffs and each staff represents a instrument that we don&#8217;t play and have their own idiosyncratic culture, vocabulary, there are notes on a certain instrument that will just sound too weak to balance some other instrument that is in a very comfortable position, but it&#8217;s the same note.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So we have to have all of that very, very nerdy information. This is coming from years and years of training. There&#8217;s very little, maybe some intuition, but this is the skill part, this is the technique part of a composer who writes for symphonic orchestras and other instruments that we don&#8217;t play, any combination of instruments we don&#8217;t play.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, when I was younger, I\u2019d get very much wrapped up in these details and I find it very difficult to gain the perspectives of the form, the big picture. And often I think the pieces that have failed in my attempts when I was younger, and in some ways in my future I will continue to fail in my future composition, I think almost every time, the place that I often get wrapped up and unable to gain the perspective or the bigger picture, I lose momentum of the form, I lose thread, important thread, things just I&#8217;m not sure how it&#8217;s going to go or how it&#8217;s going to flow better. Is there a better flow that is not there? It&#8217;s very difficult to be looking at the details of an orchestral page and then imagine this very moment which goes by in half a second.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How is it related to a 10-minute piece\u2026 which you are about to hear in <a href=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/concert\/stravinskys-firebird-clarinet-star-anthony-mcgill\/\">August<\/a>?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. Well, I have a few questions on that. First of all, for everyone, this piece is called <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/concert\/stravinskys-firebird-clarinet-star-anthony-mcgill\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Flying on the Scaly Backs of Our Mountains<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and it is essentially inspired by this poem of Dongpo but of course it&#8217;s not really about mountains, as you say. However, Wang Jie is actually quite a rock climber, I believe. Is that, is that true? You&#8217;ve done a lot of major hiking so I hear?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I&#8217;m a rock climber. Yes, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You are, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I&#8217;m a rock climber, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay, good. So enough about that, that&#8217;s giving me vertigo just asking you the question. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs]<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, it&#8217;s time to try it, Peter. It&#8217;s the best thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, yeah, okay. In another life. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs]\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But I&#8217;m fascinated to go back to what you were saying because I guess somebody who&#8217;s a wonderful pianist as you are, I often imagine like Rachmaninoff as a good example that the composition happened, you played the beginning of Beethoven 5, then the next thing that a composer would do would be to continue and then to basically write the piece and take notes on the piano with the imagination. That&#8217;s one way. And the other way is pretty much nothing to do with the piano.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But one thing I&#8217;m interested in is that I always had the sense that a composer would kind of write the big picture, think the big picture, and then start to fill in the details and the phrases and so on and then the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">last<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> thing that they would do would be to think about the details of instrumentation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But you suggest a little bit that your approach is somewhat different, that it&#8217;s the details that end up informing the shape. So just tell us a little bit about your own personal approach.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, just in this piece that I have been working on for the Colorado Music Festival, it has gone through at least three or four different evolutions of the form <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">because<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the details. Because for me, it is not really a linear idea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I think about an idea, it&#8217;s a very big, messy ball of information, but because my mind, eye, and ear can hear a very fine resolution in this ball of mess that just comes to me, it just kind of washes over me. I can&#8217;t control this. This is just the way I&#8217;m wired.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And some people even believe that this is why I&#8217;m so compelled and so devoted to the life of a composer is because I do get these ideas out of nowhere and they come to me in this huge, detailed, fine resolution form.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So as I am trying to capture, there&#8217;s no way I can write more than a page every sitting for&#8230; Well, some places, but most of the time that whole thing that comes to me, this piece, it has come to me at least a dozen times in different\u2014that ball of a piece that just arrived in my head with complete beginning, ending.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But as I&#8217;m sitting down to write, orchestrate, making these micro decisions, and then I discover that these details, they&#8217;re so alive. So they end up informing how I&#8217;m going to evolve, how I&#8217;m going to follow or not follow the form. So I don&#8217;t even know whether I can share screen, but I actually took some pictures of the three different stages of how the form has evolved.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The piece is going to be, now it&#8217;s difficult to say it precisely, but the piece, is it <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">about<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> anything? Well, there is a title to it, but it&#8217;s an abstract piece of music, right? At the end of the day, words can only take one so far, can only take an audience so far.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So what is this abstract piece of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">thing<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, right? That&#8217;s called a symphony or music? For me, because it&#8217;s so abstract\u2026 so it&#8217;s about a feeling, right? Really what it comes down to, it&#8217;s about the music. So that&#8217;s where the form, what is this so-called story that is inherent in these little details? And these little details will come back to inform how this story is going to go.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So it is about, drum roll: the feeling of five.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of five?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Five, yes. What does it feel like to hear music or to feel <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">five<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in your body, in my body?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I got this idea from many, many sources, including Indian classical dances, including my own fascination with rhythmic design, but it so just happened when I was rock climbing last time in the Eldorado Canyon, we had to take a detour because the ice sealed off a route that I was supposed to climb. So I had to go to a different part of the rock and try to figure out how to detour from this piece of ice that could potentially kill me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I went to the other side and the other side was just very unforgiving. I mean, it was like climbing glass. And there was one moment I thought to myself, &#8220;You know what? If I&#8217;m going to make it, I have to make five moves in very quick succession and it has to be super precise.&#8221; And then I see a good hold up there and I&#8217;m going to get there and then I&#8217;m going to just be stable on that last one. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that is going to get me there. That is going to be lifeline.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And just so I&#8217;m clear, you saw these moves ahead of you that you had to do? Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, but that&#8217;s unusual because I&#8217;m not that good a rock climber, okay? I&#8217;m okay, but I don&#8217;t think I can think more than three moves ahead most of the time. I don&#8217;t need to. But in this kind of situation where it&#8217;s pretty nerve-wracking and I need to think ahead a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">lot<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and it&#8217;s unfamiliar because I&#8217;m reading the route for the first time and I&#8217;m figuring it out just like when you read my score for the first time, you&#8217;ll be figuring it out too. So yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That&#8217;s fascinating. My goodness. So given everything you&#8217;re telling us about with this, there&#8217;s so many options, right? I mean a lot of composers say the hardest thing is to narrow down all the options. And I think it was DaVinci who says a piece of art is never completed, only abandoned, only abandoned.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But how do you get to the point where you can narrow yourself down to a decision, number one? And secondly, when you go back and you see something which led to the next thing, do you ever say, &#8220;Actually I could change that to something I prefer,&#8221; or is it in stone because it led to the next thing? Do you see what I&#8217;m asking?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes. And Peter, I love the way you&#8217;re asking it because, well\u2014as it stands right now, I could have just handed in the piece like a week and a half ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I don&#8217;t need it until the day before. It&#8217;ll be fine. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs] <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, I&#8217;m teasing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs]<\/span><\/i> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, [<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/about-the-festival\/staff\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Festival General Manager<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">] Alberto was like, &#8220;Give us the music now.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I&#8217;ll be very happy to see it, I assure you. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs]\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the piece was pretty much done, but I was not happy with it. Something was missing. But I couldn&#8217;t really put my finger on what was missing. I didn&#8217;t know what was missing, but I knew <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">something<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was missing. And I was like, &#8220;Ah,&#8221; I was having dream, sleep, one of those daydream things where I&#8217;m just like, &#8220;Something&#8217;s missing, I feel hungry\u2014&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We call them conniptions, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay. So last week I figured out what was missing. Yeah. And you will hear the last touch of my modification of the form of this piece in the solo cello, principal cello. And then the beginning and ending and the middle, they all have to be modified because\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because of that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, because how the piece begins and how the piece ends is now modified. It&#8217;s now developed into another thing, which I like very much, by the way. So I&#8217;m having sort of a Turner moment, Mr. Turner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So you&#8217;ve got a piano there and this is, I&#8217;m only asking if it&#8217;s not a good idea you tell me, but is there anything that you can share with us? You talk about the number five, is there kind of a thematic aspect or character that you could give us a small hint on the piano or would you rather we wait until August to hear any notes?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh no, I can give you something! Yes, for sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think it might be fun. And everybody please feel free to chime in with some questions at this point because I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s all kinds of things on your mind that I&#8217;m not asking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes. And Peter actually, the second part, actually the first part of your question, would sum this up very beautifully\u2026 is that if I&#8217;m honest with myself, there is an ideal form for this piece that we will all share in August, of my piece, my new piece. There is an ideal form, that&#8217;s sure, I&#8217;m sure about that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But as a mortal here, and I think music is sacred, I believe music is sacred, and the best I can do at this very moment, which the best I could do in 2020, the best I could do in 2021, and the best I can do <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">now,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is what caused the migration and the evolution of the form of the piece. They look nothing alike, but the piece is there. The piece is there, the feeling of five is in my body, is in my soul.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so I am doing the best I can in this moment of my mortal life to capture what it means in this moment of my life, to be able to deliver this magnificent piece of music that I hear in my head, trapped in my head.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And I have such a strong urge to share this with the world, with the public, with musicians, with the audiences, because it&#8217;s so great. It&#8217;s much, much greater than anything I could ever imagine when these symphonies come to me like a flash, just like that, they&#8217;re just so much better than anything in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that&#8217;s where the struggle comes in, but that&#8217;s also where the tremendous reward of having then done it. I&#8217;ve been waiting for this moment to happen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What&#8217;s missing? What exactly is missing? How do I know what&#8217;s missing? Right? It&#8217;s missing, it&#8217;s not there. So how do I know what&#8217;s not there that needs to be there. So that&#8217;s the creative moment where it takes years for me to know that, to kind of have a hunch for it, something&#8217;s missing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay. Let me just press you on a few details, because I think probably everyone&#8217;s thinking, wow, you have symphonies that just come to your head, could this happen at any time of day? Does it happen all day long? Does it happen in the middle of the night?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And that&#8217;s the first part of the question, second part of the question, is it orchestrated already?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is it sounds of instruments? Okay. So how often does this feeling live in you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There&#8217;s two ways that they come to me very predictably. First is when I eat noodles. I&#8217;m not kidding. When I have noodles, when I sit down and eat alone in silence, music just starts just like buzzing. My head is buzzing in music and often just entire pieces. I can&#8217;t explain it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_271650\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-271650\" class=\"wp-image-271650 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/JoAnn-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"Composer Wang Jie and musician\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-271650\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>photo courtesy of Wang Jie<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And the second is driving in silence. So I love driving, especially just getting on a highway and just have this kind of visual thing passing by very quietly. And once I did a driving session from Buffalo, New York after JoAnn played my symphony in Buffalo and I drove from Buffalo to New York, I was having such a great time with this new symphony. I was so inspired by the musicians of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, I was just like\u2014and the whole trip, five and a half hours, I did not stop. I was having such a great time just being with the symphony in my head.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But that was a symphony you&#8217;d already composed, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, no. It&#8217;s a new symphony that I never got to write!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What did JoAnn, by the way everyone that&#8217;s<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/JoAnn_Falletta\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> JoAnn Falletta<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the wonderful music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, but so what had they played of your piece?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Symphony Number One.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay. And so what was the piece that was in your head driving back?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was just a new piece, a new symphony.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I see. Wow. Yeah, that&#8217;s really remarkable. It&#8217;s almost like a positive hallucination.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is. It is. Yeah. And, and I&#8217;m just wired this way and I&#8217;m completely functional because I&#8217;m being safe on the road, I&#8217;m following my GPS, but all of this is going on in layers in my head and I was having little recipe sessions in my head, &#8220;Oh, if there&#8217;s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">this<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> moment, then I will orchestrate it <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">this<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> way.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It comes from my love for the orchestra, because I love the orchestra. It&#8217;s among my favorite instruments to write for.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, it&#8217;s got every instrument. That&#8217;s the great thing, right? It&#8217;s got every color\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Limitless.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I think we might have a couple of questions coming in. Erica, you want to help us with those?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Erica Reid (Marketing Manager, Colorado Music Festival): <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes. I wanted to just say we have about 10 minutes just to keep an eye on time. And I also know that Jie has prepared to play a little bit on the piano and I think everybody would love to hear that. I have a question about Jie, whether you&#8217;re going to be in person for <a href=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/concert\/stravinskys-firebird-clarinet-star-anthony-mcgill\/\">the premiere in August<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I will be, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Erica: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And is there anything you&#8217;re looking forward to in Colorado when you&#8217;re coming out here? Will you be doing climbing?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, absolutely. Cannot come to Colorado and not climb.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Erica: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wonderful. I think we&#8217;ve got some people offering to take you on a hike if you like. And Stephen Trainor asks if you ever get tunes by others stuck in your head, if you get earworms, which might be, he says, annoying for a composer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Could be. Yes. And sometimes I get that just from reading a score, I open a score and sometimes I have to check instrumentation stuff, and then it&#8217;s just stuck in my ear, just like that. And so Peter, so I&#8217;m going to let you in on this. Do you like <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bol%C3%A9ro\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bol\u00e9ro<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Who doesn&#8217;t like <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bol\u00e9ro<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Absolutely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So here&#8217;s something that I&#8217;m willing to give away for now: this piece is like <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bol\u00e9ro<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> but on steroids.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter:\u00a0 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In what way is it like Bol\u00e9ro? Does it have like two phrases that repeat?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a few phrases, yes. And they do come back, they keep coming back and there is\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is the tempo the same throughout?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, it&#8217;s much faster because it&#8217;s got my youth in it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, no, no. I meant, but does whatever tempo it starts with, is that retained throughout the piece as it is in Bol\u00e9ro?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes. Oh yes, yes. Oh, and it escalates.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It escalates.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, and it just explodes into this celebration of the five. And so actually I don&#8217;t know that a lot of people know this, is that <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bol\u00e9ro<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in terms of the form is actually brilliant. It&#8217;s very Chinese.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s wrong to say that, but you know what I mean? For a Chinese calligraphy master, for example, you do not really break your strokes if you know what I mean. Picasso did this too. Picasso can draw. In fact, I don&#8217;t know if you guys can see this, there is a penguin by Picasso, right there. It&#8217;s one stroke. It&#8217;s just one line. And the penguin is looking very kind of feisty, it&#8217;s alive just after one line.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And same is true, this is the soul of the Chinese calligraphy practice, which my father practiced and made me practice, I was no good. But you have to be able to trace one line so you have to have the whole character in your heart, in your chest, and then you just know, you just follow that and your hand just knows how to do this one thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bol\u00e9ro<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is like that, it&#8217;s a forever augmenting, augmenting, augmenting form. And it ends with everybody getting very excited. Oh no, of course, at first it was just very few musicians or plucking and the snare drum throughout, we also have a snare drum here, very important part.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But my rhythmic cycle and I was actually <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/fred.child.12\/posts\/5661618557200129\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">rehearsing<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> it earlier, just in case you were going to put me on the spot, &#8220;Jie, we want to hear the rhythmic cycle,&#8221; and my husband and I put on the metronome, because I roll 126 quarter note and this rhythmic thing is like, I&#8217;m a composer so I get to write virtuosic music for other composers. But so I roll the rhythmic cycle that is challenging even for me. So I was practicing it earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By the way, are you saying that 126 is possibly too fast?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you do 120, it wouldn&#8217;t be the end of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just the reason I ask, and by the way, there&#8217;s lots of requests for you to actually get to the piano so we&#8217;ll get you to the piano. But the reason I ask that is because I just find it so funny that people look at Beethoven&#8217;s metronome markings, which he put in when he was way later than he wrote most of his music, and with a probably pretty lousy metronome. But if you just take about 5 to 8% off Beethoven&#8217;s metronome markings, most of the time they&#8217;re fabulous.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And even you today in 2022 are saying, &#8220;Yeah, my metronome marking is actually a bit too fast when I get into the actual idea of playing it in a hall.&#8221; Okay. Let&#8217;s hear some stuff, however you want to introduce it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay. So here is something that kind of goes through the entire piece. You&#8217;ll hear it again, again, again, and sometimes it&#8217;s by soloist, it&#8217;s kind of the spinal cord of the piece and I&#8217;ll do my best. Okay. And because I&#8217;m not a percussionist per se. So Peter, this is 126. [vocalizes the rhythm]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Impressive. My ear training teacher would&#8217;ve been very impressed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you. Thank you. And it is also true that the melodic design of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bol\u00e9ro<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is also brilliant because three is actually a magic number, three was important for Bach, three was important, trinity, the idea of three. For some reason, there is some nature&#8217;s coding in the number three.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So there&#8217;s also three tunes that you hopefully, and I know so, because I repeat it enough so that you&#8217;ll walk away kind of humming the tune. And the tune, I&#8217;ll just give you a little taste of what they&#8217;re like and we have a clarinet coming very, very soft to tell us the first thing that this piece wants to say. [performs melody at the piano]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And Peter, and as soon as you start conducting this, people will notice it&#8217;s all five. This is all five. [counts sets of 5 within the melody] And it goes on and on and it gets more and more lively, just like <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bol\u00e9ro<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> does.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So if anybody in the audience who loves <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bol\u00e9ro <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the way I love <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bol\u00e9ro<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I think you&#8217;ll find resonance in this piece, just in terms of, I am just taking you, holding your hand and I am inviting you through this piece to hear some of the faintest sounds there is in nature, which an orchestra can do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An orchestra can do the most unbelievable whisper, and then it could also terrify you. But this time we&#8217;re not going to terrify you, we&#8217;re going to celebrate, because the love for the mountain. There&#8217;s a reason for the saying, \u201cthe mountain is calling,\u201d right? Because the mountain makes a sound and makes many, many sounds if you were to hear it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And for me, because I&#8217;m a musician and I&#8217;m a composer, when I hear mountains speak to me, I hear them in music and in these very joyful&#8230; because when I think about going to the mountains, &#8220;Ah, yes, I look forward to go to the mountains. Yes, I can&#8217;t wait to go to the mountains.&#8221; That&#8217;s the feeling and the emotion that I do my best every day to put into this symphony.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I just want to go back to one little thing and we&#8217;re probably out of time fairly soon, but you talked about this solo cello gesture, does that remain in the same rhythm, or it&#8217;s a moment of quiet in rhythm?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: It&#8217;s the flying part. And this I actually cannot play on the piano.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right, right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We&#8217;re sliding some interesting notes there that implies, I hope, that the sound of the mountain is always tracing you. And when I fly on top of the mountain or looking at the mountain or flying right next to the mountain, it&#8217;s that, it&#8217;s like that. And it means so much to me that I don&#8217;t know finally, literally earlier this week what&#8217;s today? Wednesday? Monday, it was about like 7:15 in the morning. I was like, &#8220;Ah, that&#8217;s it. It&#8217;s the solo cello that&#8217;s missing.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right. Well, I can&#8217;t wait to get the score. And I have a feeling that there might be quite a lot of people who have witnessed this conversation who might love coming to a rehearsal if we could organize that so that they can see you, watch your face as you hear the music for the first time, and then hear you ask us to do things slightly differently to really reflect what it is that you had in your head when you first started out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I always find that process to be at least as interesting as coming to a concert, in a very different way, of course. But I know a lot of people love to come to rehearsals and with your energy and passion for what you do, I think it would be really exciting to be able to do that. So we&#8217;ll figure out whether we can to make that happen this summer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I love that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before we say goodbye, I wonder if anybody else has any questions for a wonderful Wang Jie, Erica, any others coming our way?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Erica: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No other questions. I had a lot of just gratitude for the time both of you have taken today to do this. I think everybody is really excited to hear the full work and love getting a look at the composer&#8217;s process. It&#8217;s not really a point of view we get to hear from that often. So thank you so much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fred Child did write in with a translation of the poem, which I thought might be nice, it&#8217;s really short to share since you&#8217;ve been talking about the mountain. He asks, &#8220;Is this a reasonable translation of the poem?\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From the north, I see a ridge. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From the west, I see a high peak. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It appears different <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">yet in itself is the same. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I don&#8217;t know the true face of Mount Lu <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">only by being on the mountain.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What do you think, Jie, is it very close?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh wow. It&#8217;s so untranslatable in some ways, because the poem actually asks a question because changing perspectives, I mean, I&#8217;ve been in this world for a little bit and I&#8217;ve already discovered it is nearly impossible to change people&#8217;s mind. And so I think the shifting of the perspectives, it&#8217;s the kind of work the mind gets to do, but it doesn&#8217;t happen very often.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That&#8217;s why this poetic moment is so precious because how do you see the whole picture from the mountain? From what angle? There is no such an angle, only an eye. In Wallace Stevens, where it&#8217;s only an eye that sees 20 snowy mountains but the only thing moving that the eye can see is the one eye of a blackbird.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s that kind of all-encompassing perspective that will give us the whole mountain. So the mountain, I mean, how do you discover a mountain? How do I discover that this is the piece? I can only take one route at a time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Same is true, the mountain in Colorado, there&#8217;s many, many different trails you can hike in a mountain, but how do you see the whole mountain though, right? If you&#8217;re above it, then you are only seeing it from above it but if you see it from the north, from the west, from the east, from the south, then what is this mind eye that only exists in the fictional world and in our imagination. I find that very empowering to just fly, fly in a way that will give me that perspective one day.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_271648\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-271648\" class=\"wp-image-271648 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/FredChild-300x300.jpeg\" alt=\"Composer Wang Jie with husband\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-271648\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>photo courtesy of Wang Jie<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beautiful, beautiful. And thank you, Fred. Fred is from <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yourclassical.org\/performance-today\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Performance Today<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of course, we love his voice and everything he says. And one day I should introduce you to Wang Jie. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs]<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs] <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Don&#8217;t know much about this guy, is he nice, Peter?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They&#8217;re actually married. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[laughs] <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anyway, so Wang Jie, thank you so much. I&#8217;m very excited to get the score now. I feel like I&#8217;ve have already a little bit of entrance into the piece and what it&#8217;s about, but we&#8217;re so looking forward to having you out in beautiful Boulder, it&#8217;s really one of the most glorious places on the entire earth. So thank you very, very much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks to all of you for listening in and thank you, Cindy, for organizing this and we&#8217;ll see you very soon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Cindy Hohman (Marketing Director, Colorado Music Festival): <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes. Thank you. And everybody, this was recorded so keep an eye on our website, our email newsletter, social media. You can watch the replay. So thanks everyone. Thank you Jie. Thanks Peter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you everyone. It&#8217;s been fun.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Peter: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Take care. Bye-bye.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Jie: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bye.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Music Director Peter Oundjian sat down with composer Wang Jie to discuss her &#8220;Flying on the Scaly Backs of Our Mountains,&#8221; a brand new piece of music which the Festival will premiere on August 4, 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":271441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[382],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}