Yesterday my two Honours Project students gave their lecture-recitals: one (trained by my great friend and colleague Elsa Lee) played Brahms’ Op. 117, drawing on Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy to interpret the inwardness and melancholy of this set—referred to by Brahms himself as “lullabies of my sorrow.” The other performed Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, focusing on narratives and the concept of…
The last two weeks took me to Chicago for the SCSM annual meeting, Atlanta for a guest lecture at Emory University, and Boston for the H.C. Robbins Landon 100 conference. I don’t think I have had this much fun on a trip in a while 😊 I learned a great deal of new things and met awesome…
My uncle just passed away and I am going to his funeral tomorrow in Guangzhou with my family. He was a great father, son, husband, and uncle, but somehow I remember him as the great oldest brother of my dad the most. Their brotherhood stood the test of time, distance, and intergenerational trauma. Filial piety, xiao,…
2025 was probably one of my most travelled years: Shanghai and Beijing for student recruitment (though things in Beijing were cancelled in the end, but in Shanghai I had the experience of visiting the Municipal Educational Examinations Authority); Washington D.C. for a research trip, combined with a short visit to Los Angeles to see my sister…
The movie Parasite (2019) was brought up in yesterday’s class as we were exploring the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho’s Symphony No.7, “Insect Symphony” (1988). I have unsubscribed from Netflix for more than a year (but I have stayed somewhat informed about the potentially addictive by relying on second-hand sources), but Parasite on its own is worth streaming. The first…
In research classes sometimes students wonder about the differences between music analysis and music interpretation. A seemingly simple question that welcomes a range of (simple) answers: one might say, for example, music analysis focuses on the music’s intrinsic elements and structures while music interpretation examines the subjective understanding and experience of music; or, music analysis…
The new school year will begin soon, and it will already mark my fourth year at the Academy of Music at HKBU, though my first year was part-time only (I split my time between HKU and HKBU). There is much to look forward to; new faculty members have joined us, and we will have 90…
This will be my final week in Grand Rapids (next week I will be in Detroit checking out Motown museum … gotta learn some more music history before heading home). I for sure will miss Meeter Center, especially the great people and resources. I have had chances to do or check out musical things, too:…
It’s almost July already, pretty crazy. This will be a relatively short post, as I write mostly to myself to keep track of myself. Two things I wrote about last year did not happen: I did not at all read more Kierkegaard (except for this article on Kierkegaard and imagination, which perhaps does not count,…
Today was the commencement, one of my favourite occasions of the year because of the celebration (and I do like having the chance to wear the Vivienne-Westwood-designed KCL gown from back then heh). I had the pleasure to work with some of the graduates this past semester and I loved reading their essays. One wrote…