(San Diego Union Tribune) Acclaimed composer and UC San Diego professor Lei Liang, whose work boldly fuses Eastern and Western traditions, has been selected as a 2021 winner of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Awards.
There are 18 recipients of this year’s awards in music, which total $225,000. Liang is one of two artists this year to receive the academy’s Goddard Lieberson Fellowships in Music, which are given to “mid-career composers of exceptional gifts.” This year’s other Lieberson honoree is Tyshawn Sorey, among the most celebrated composers to emerge in the past two decades.
For the academy and Liang, the third time is indeed the charm, as he noted in a Monday interview from the San Diego home he shares with his 10-year-old son, Albert, and wife, harpsichordist and UCSD music lecturer Takae Ohnishi.
“I have been nominated twice before — the first time was in 2011 — so I guess I was on the academy’s radar,” Liang said. “I am very honored. I just wish I could celebrate in person with some of my good friends who have helped keep me going through the pandemic for the past year.
“The one thing I noticed about this particular award is that it’s given to a ‘mid-career composer.’ So, I guess I cannot call myself a young composer anymore. That’s a bit bittersweet for me!”
The fellowship is named after composer and former Columbia Records president Goddard Lieberson. It was established in 1979 by the New York-based academy, which was founded in 1898. Previous fellowship recipients include composers Missy Mazzoli, Stephen Stucky and Liang’s fellow UCSD music professor Chinary Ung, who in 2020 was inducted into the academy.
“Lei Liang has studied East and West music traditions extensively and profoundly, and combined them into his music creation thoughtfully with his vision and deep care for our society and the future of the world,” said composer Chen Yi, the academy’s jury chair, via email Monday.
A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and Harvard University, Liang is a native of Tianjin, China. The Lieberson fellowship is the latest honor he has received in recent years.
In 2018, Qualcomm appointed Liang as its first Research Artist in Residence. In late 2019, he was announced as the 2020 winner of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his climate change-inspired “A Million Streams,” a borders-leaping orchestral work. In 2020, Liang received UCSD’s Chancellor’s Distinguished Professorship. He is the first music professor at the school to be so honored.
During the pandemic, Liang has been teaching his music classes online. He has also continued his ongoing creative partnerships with scientists at UCSD, Qualcomm and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Liang’s most recent composition, “A Mother’s Song,” was written for violist Hsin-Yun Hung and pipa virtuoso Wu Man, a North County resident.
“They commissioned me to write this for them and hope to debut it later this year,” Liang said of the piece, which is inspired by weathered Mongolian folk songs. He learned the songs during a 2018 trip to China, where he met with Wulalji, a leading Mongolian scholar.
“Wulalji learned these songs from his mother and sang them to me,” Liang said. “The reason I really resonate with these songs is that so many of us, including myself, are away from home. And, during this pandemic, I have thought a lot about what home means and where we come from.”
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune by George Varga