Lakescape V

Having been interested in Mahayana Buddhism for a number of years, I went to a Buddhist monastery in upstate New York to study meditation in 1999. One evening, while walking alone by the side of the lake, I caught the sight of a “V” shape floating and extending on the surface of the water. It was a beaver taking a swim under the moon. This image gave me insight into my relationship with silence: underneath the music is a profoundly deep silence upon which I seek to inscribe my signature through sound. It serves as a point of departure that led to a series of works. In Lakescape V, the tranquility in the original “lake” series is disturbed by showers of “phonetic particles” taken from Wai-lim Yip’s poetry (in both English and Chinese) as the piece traverses through different states of mind. Lakescape V was written for and dedicated to loadbang who gave its world premiere at the Miller Theatre’s Composer Portrait on November 17th, 2016. - Lei Liang