Angel Lam

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Gallery and Thoughts...

We must call back the 'self' and revive our accumulation of experience and our capability of observation. Let our minds float, across the rigors of the physical world, where we feel the tastes of life, and our music, as evidence of the forces of life, without black and white nor right or wrong, but only the mysteries of life, and of life, all on its own. I believe, that is the essence, of our post-post modern world.

The mind is a lonely hunter.

- Spring 2010

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As time went by, the last curtain of my graduate life at Yale University drew near. I could only explain my experience like going into a theatre in the middle of an old movie; it was not only the light contrast that I have to adjust to, but also the wrinkling of the movie screen, streets wavering back and forth, now warped, then caving in, blurring and doubled...I turned my back and prepared to head towards the exit, suddenly, at an impulse of a moment, images of the screen became explicit and clear. I sat down again and found myself in the screen, shopping around. I could even hear what the shopkeepers are selling.

I agree with what the modernists have said, extreme romanticism corrupts the soul, but a fool like me, stubborn as I am, refuses to let go of the audiences who fall into the palms of the commercial world. I decided to find my own solution. As a rationalist, I write stories for my music so that they recall lives, and arouse definitions.

Remember the girl yelling hysterically and calling her leader's name at the People's Square? Her mind had already left her body? Remember the girl waiting anxiously for the finalist's list of a popular song contest? She doesn't know that the society she lives in is conducted by reasoning?

Here I am, the founder and guardian of a new form of music, higher definition performing arts.

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April 20, 2010 Rehearsal with Professor Aldo Parisot and Yale Cellos
performance of The Emperor's Eight Thousand Women Ghosts

yale cellos 8 thousand

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"To further illustrate the soundscape, instrumentation, and language in Awakening from a Disappearing Garden,
Angel Lam performs a narration to accompany the musical images that inspired her work."
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Photo Galleries

"Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Music Director Robert Spano, and Composer Angel Lam receive a standing ovation for
Awakening from a Disappearing Garden" ASO Photo Galleries

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"Between the music and literature there is a vast whiteness, like the ancient poem drawings of the Sung period, there lies a meaning, or a question, only the listener's imagination can complete." - April 2010

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"Since 13, Scarlett had always reminded me, "Afterall...tomorrow is another day."

I give a higher definition to the music, back to the detail, back to our self-consciousness. Gao Xingjian (recipient of the 2000 Nobel prize in literature) said that drama (music) is nothing but performance; the performer should always be aware that he/she is performing. It is a real thing and a self-conscious art. We go back to the surface, and make interpretation an invention. Time is extended through the recollection of details, in Awakening from a Disappearing Garden, the three minute narration becomes an eternity course...the luxurious mansion, the solid red, nine-foot wide main entrance, the royal green mandarin dress...they come alive, as Aurelius Augustinus told us on the art of the display of time.

On going back to the surface, Shin's mother (Shin is a five year old character in Crayon Shin-Chan, the Japanese manga series created by Yoshito Usui) scolds Shin for leaving crumbs while eating cake, his father tells him to behave and improve his eating manner. Shin answers, "it is not my problem, it is the cake's problem--we should change the cake, not my eating habit." Shin taught his parents that there is no need to go so deep. (This scenario is my own.) I borrow the characters from Crayon Shin-Chan to explain the spirit of Post-modernism.

Music, like poetry, stems from an inner force; it comes, and it goes, like flowers, bloom and fade."

- January 2010

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Travels in northern China


"Four sides of lotus, three sides of willows..."


West Sky Gate, Mount Tai The mountain that touches the sky and where Emperors worship Heaven

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The Midnight Run

Midnight Run (2007) A theater production for dance, music, narration and visual projections Mentored by Martha Clarke Story and music by Angel Lam Choreography by Peabody Dance Director Carol Bartlett Visual projections and stage design by Carol Bartlett and Angel Lam


	Photos from Baltimore Sun and M.S. Druskin

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Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble tours China, Fall 2007
Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain, Hong Kong Stop--Hong Kong Cultural Center Concert Hall

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Silk Road Chicago, Symphony Center, Spring 2007

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Carnegie Hall, April 2007
Premiere of Sun, Moon, and Star

with mentors Dawn Upshaw and Osvaldo Golijov

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Premiere of The Burning Babe, St. John's Cathedral, Los Angeles, December 13, 2008. Loyola High School Choir under the direction of Steven Speciale

With singers and musicians from the University of Southern California

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October 5, 2007
Premiere of work written for Hong Kong Sinfonietta and Australia's Grainger Quartet

with Maestra Yip Wing-Sie
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1st prize "Prix d'Ete" Composition Competition, Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University
Imagery of Water (2002)
for guitar, harp, vibraphone, crotales and double bass

Performed by Shui Quartet, Thursday Noon Concert and Award Ceremony
Miriam A. Friedberg Hall, April 17, 2003

  (left to right)
  Nozomi Abe, vibraphone/crotales
  Tyler Goodwin, double bass
  Douglas Rogers, guitar
  Monika Vasey, harp

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Salzburg, Austria. Internationale Sommerakademie Der Universitat Mozarteum Salzburg
Masterclass with Franco Donatoni and Simone Fontanelli

(...and visiting)


Cathedral Church of Our Lady (Munich, Germany)		Neues Rathaus, Flanders Gothic style new town hall

Hellbrunn Palace (Salzburg, Austria)		Hohensalzburg Fortress, overlooking the "city of Mozart"