Soprano Jennifer Lien and pianist Lina Yoo-Min Lee will share highlights from their full recital (presented on Friday, March 28) on the Asian American lived experience.
Images of Asia have long sparked the European musical imagination. As described by European poets and composers, these images include exotic landscapes and fetishized female figures, stereotypes that remain even as the Asian diaspora has taken root and claimed citizenship all over the world.
With three newly-commissioned song cycles by Asian American composers Justine F. Chen, Melissa Dunphy, and Kamala Sankaram, this recital asserts Asian American lived experience from the perspective of those of us who live it. As contrasted with Maurice Ravel’s Asie, a prime example of European musical Orientalism, these new songs describe the joys, pains, contradictions, and pride we experience as Asians living in this land we call home.
