Few start their life’s work at the age of four. But for associate professor of music and classical composer Lei Liang — whose parents were both music historians — it only made sense to follow their lead.
Not that he always enjoyed it.
“I was bored to death when I was practicing,” Liang said. “So I just started making up my own music on the piano. I started to compose my own pieces. But my parents were pretty lenient — they let me just make some sound on the piano for 30 minutes every day and that counted as practice.”
Liang has graduated from plunking around aimlessly to composing his own pieces, to wide acclaim. In 2009, the professor was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for the duration of 2009 and 2010 for his accomplishments in the music industry — which include composing countless pieces over a lifetime and winning Harvard’s George Arthur Knight prize in 2006.
In addition to teaching that year, Liang composed numerous concert pieces. His favorite, titled “Verge,” was written for the string section of the New York Philharmonic — the oldest orchestra in America. Liang worked with 18 musicians and the final piece was roughly 12 minutes long.
“It was based on the birth of my son, who had just been born as I was writing the piece,” Liang said of his firstborn, Albert, who is now 17 months old and who enjoys listening to “Verge” when he’s upset. “I transformed his name into many possible musical expressions. It’s called ‘Verge’ because it was composed on the verge of his birth.”
In the time between his first tinkling melodies and achieving professional success, Liang was border-hopping. The Chinese-born composer lived in Beijing, China, learning conservatory-style music until he was 17 years old, then traveled to Texas to further his musical education. Liang left for Boston in 1992 to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in music, from the New England Conservatory of Music and Harvard University, respectively.
“I was not taught about Chinese music when I was growing up,” Liang said. “After I came to America, I became very interested in Chinese music because I suddenly realized how little I knew about where I came from.”
Though Liang mostly works with classical music, he is very interested in Chinese history and culture, and makes a point of expressing his opinions on the ever-changing Chinese society in his pieces. Liang frequently uses Chinese instruments when composing new works.
“When you’re composing a piano piece, you think about what has been done already,” Liang said. “But there are also things that have not been done yet. That’s one approach, and the other is, ‘What do you want to say with this piece?’”
Though Liang has been composing for years, the creative process can still prove difficult, especially when faced with the task of composing pieces for instruments he does not play (Liang plays the piano and the guqin, an ancient seven-string Chinese instrument).
“Your hands can be conditioned by the instruments you know,” Liang said. “I know the piano very well and when I write for other instruments, like for strings, my mind is conditioned to how my fingers move on the keyboard.”
Still, Liang doesn’t compose using a piano reduction (which involves writing the piano part and then building the rest of the orchestra’s sound from there). Instead, Liang writes pieces for the entire orchestra, reversing the old method of composing from a reduction.
As a result, sometimes it would take Liang a year to write a 10-minute piece. Other times, it took only an afternoon. The longest piece Liang has composed thus far is 20 minutes — a record he’s about to break.
“I am writing a very long piece for our percussion faculty here,” Liang said.“That’s going to be 70 minutes long. I started working on it last year.”
Throughout his career, Liang’s greatest musical influences have been familiar names — Claudio Monteverdi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and György Kurtág. Of his teachers, Liang’s biggest inspirations were Robert Cogan, Sir Harrison Birtwistle and a Mongolian musician, Serashi.
“When I listen to [Serashi’s] music, I just [feel] that the music projects such a sense of vastness of space and solitude,” Liang said. “It’s not only the Western composers who are my models. I look at him as the person I want to communicate to when I write music.”
With so many positive role models, the switch from composer to teacher was a natural one for Liang, who joined UCSD’s faculty in 2007 and teaches four to five courses a year. Additionally, Liang has lectured at Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern and numerous other universities, including some overseas.
“When you’re a student, you’re discovering a lot of things by being exposed to different resources,” Liang said. “When you become a teacher, there is an enlarged inner space in your imagination already, and it’s a matter of deepening that search. I have felt they have a lot to offer.”
His students seem to feel the same about the youthful professor.
“Instead of imposing restrictions on his students, he encourages us to explore knowledge and expertise in the music areas that we are interested in, but with imagination and a critical point of view,” Yeung-ping Chen, a Ph.D. student in composition, said.
Owen Ferro, a Muir College graduate, expanded on Chen’s thoughts.
“[Liang] has a sincerity for creating music that is a constant source of inspiration for those fortunate enough to know him,” Ferro said. “As a scholar, composer and a musician, he is a master craftsman and an artist who is not afraid to create something beautiful.”
Music Man
Jan 18, 2011
More to Discover