Interview with composer Wang Jie

Shanghai-born composer Wang Jie (Wang is her family name) has been described by the New York Times as a composer of "introspective" music and the Pittsburgh Tribune Review describes her work as "scrupulously crafted ... [embracing] both Chinese and Western ... expression." Her opera NANNAN was performed by the New York City Opera during their annual VOX festival and her piano trio SHADOW was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble during the Museum of Modern Art's Summergarden series. Jie is the winner of the ACO's (American Composer's Orchestra) 2009 Underwood Commission and the audible result of that commission is From the Other Sky, a narrative song cycle (or, as described on the ACO's website, a "multimedia concert opera"), that will be performed by the ACO on Friday October 15th 7.30pm at Zankel Hall.

We spent most of the interview discussing From the Other Sky, but once again, we embraced the tangent. However, unlike my previous interview with composer Daniel Wohl, which took place through email (hence giving me, through cut-and-paste technology, the ability to preserve tone of voice), my interview with Wang Jie was conducted face to face, over coffee at the Hungarian Pastry Shop on 110th. I am no stenographer, so I have to admit upfront that what is missing and what I failed to capture in the text is Jie's distinct manner of expression, the vocal gestures that are entirely hers and hers alone. That said, my usual conceit applies: BOLD are words by Jie and italics are mine.

1. From the Other Sky

From the Other Sky is a narrative song cycle in three movements with a postlude. Each movement represents a different scene in the story: the first movement takes place in the palace of the Zodiac Animals; the second movement sets the scene on Earth; the third movement we're back in the Palace; and the final Postlude returns us to Earth. The work is scored for chamber orchestra, coloratura Emily Hindrichs (playing the role of the Lark), mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann (playing the role of the Rat and the Crippled Woman), and a non-singing actor Hugh Sinclair (both director and playing the role of the Rooster and the Grim Reaper). I play the role of the Monkey as well as keyboards in the orchestra.

The story (an original one by Jie) is a fable on how the thirteen animals of the Chinese Zodiac (in the order of Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig and Lark) came to become twelve (the Lark doesn't exist in the Chinese Zodiac as we know it). The Lark is an accidental heroine (the Holy Fool in the tradition of Wagner's Parsifal) who saves the world unwittingly: as a result, not of what she does, but what is done to her.

2. Quotation

I use quotation quite extensively in From the Other Sky: Brahms’ Lullaby, Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra, and Vivaldi's Spring, but in a twisted ... rock-and-roll way (I have a strong suspicion that Jie's theatrical aesthetic, her use of the obvious punchline, revels in Camp, a sensibility that, as Sontag describes it, is "in essence ... its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration ... the Camp eye has the power to transform experience.").

3. Opera

I love opera. I love the repertoire (Jie impressively cites, chapter and verse, her favorite scenes from the Mozart operas that she loves in the course of the interview) because the emotions feel more real to me. Opera is where life and its emotions exist in an ideal space: the sets, the costumes, the singers, the orchestra are larger than life; the magnitude of the production overwhelms you. Opera is the only place I know where one can experience a complete immersion in an art form.

4. Form

Form is sequence, timing, order and repetition. Without form, without a routine, you cannot create surprise, at best only "shock" ... I pry further, for the use of these terms intrigues me ... Mahler is a composer of surprise, whereas Wagner is shock ... My curiosity piqued, I pressed on ... It is not a value judgment: the best composers use both in their arsenal. Mahler for example both surprises and shocks. But for me, a surprise is something organic rather than a violent jolt; it is the gradual revelation that variation is taking place, rather than a brute display of difference. And if I had to choose one over the other, I'd pick "surprise". Anyway, back to opera: if I wanted shock, I'd go to the circus.

5. Musical Ancestry (or where do you see yourself in this thing we call our tradition?)

Stravinsky is a big model for me: especially with his use of rhythm in clarifying form. But also Mahler and Ligeti. The important pieces for me would be Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Orpheus and the Requiem Canticles; for Mahler it would be his song cycles and his last two symphonies; for Ligeti I would have to say his keyboard music (that guy has good ideas: he knows how to sustain them and he knows when to stop!), "With Pipes, Drums and Fiddles" and "Le Grand Macabre" (though I think now that the staging hides the flaws in the form of that work).

6. What Music Wants

When I was studying at Shanghai Conservatory, everyone was worshipping European complexity and so was I. I was working on a string quartet that I wanted to show to the composer Qu Xiao-Song, and I proudly mentioned to him that my goal for the work was to make it more Ferneyhoughian than Ferneyhough. Qu Xiao-Song responded straight to my face: I'm not interested in looking at your music because I know what you want to write but have you figured out what music wants you to write? He continued: I hear too much ambition and ego in your music, but once you’ve figured out what music wants you to write, you won't even need to show your music to me.

7. Desert Island Discs

One of my favorite things to request from composers is a simple list of the music that they love, where "love" is that which requires no rational explanation, only unembarrassed affection (an experience before words, born in the absence of signs, like Cage's love for Satie). Starting with this interview, I have a new favorite question, a variation on Desert Island Discs: I ask a composer to tell me, with no editing on his or her part, what the most played tracks on his or her iTunes are. The humor, the lesson, is in the difference between the two.

Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, Mahler's Ruckert Lieder, Bach's Sonatina from his Cantata no. 106 ("God's Time is the Best Time"), the last movement of my First Symphony because it reminds me of who I am, and Mozart's Requiem.

And what are the most played tracks on your playlist?

The second movement of Ravel's G Major Piano Concerto, Bach's Sonatina from his Cantata no. 106 ("God's Time is the Best Time"), and Bill Evans' The Dolphin (Before and After).

Bill Evans?

Yes! I love how he plays the same thing differently on the second take and I'm trying to figure out what he does ...

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From the Other Sky will be performed by the ACO on Friday October 15th 7.30pm at Zankel Hall.