I tend to interpret history, culture, character and mood with instruments and themes. Especially orchestral and ancient folk instruments. Music has accompanied me through the journey of knowing the world, the past, the humans, and myself. Curiosity and emotion urge me to seek for that language to tell the truth within me and beyond me.
My Journey to Music
It goes back to some early memories. The Lion King, my fist movie, got me obsessed at age 3. I took the tape with me everywhere and showed it to everyone I knew. Yet everywhere I went, I ended up being the only one who kept watching the film repeatedly, probably for two hundred times and could recite every sentence and every note in it.
At age 4, my parents made me learn to play the piano. It put a switch to my Childhood. I was tutored by three teachers from the Central Conservatory of Music and the China Conservatory of Music. I also joined a choir at age 8. By age 12, I’d finished the compulsory music theory course at the Central Conservatory of Music to get my Piano Level Certificate. I wasn’t fond of the lessons, exams and competitions. I felt forced.
That’s probably why, as an absolute music lover, a teenager who never takes the headphones off, who would spend money on all kinds of CDs, soundtrack recordings, operas, musicals and concerts… I was determined to go down the path of Fine Art. Music and art together opened up so much space in my head for me to hide and explore. They were my portal to a faraway world. I started painting because music turned into images in my mind. I made series based on pieces by Liszt and Chopin. And from Dvořák to Mascagni, Beethoven to Morricone… so many great souls were there with me, inspiring me.
Music also became my approach to learning and teaching. It has accompanied me through the journey of knowing the world, the past, the humans, and myself. Each land and period has its colour and sound. Within the journey that humanity has taken to have merged into the world as it is today, I think I may somehow grasp a slight interpretation of existence. 2017, I began hosting music (and art) education sessions for kids and parents in my studio. I wished to make an example of a type of music education based on engaging and appreciating (very unconventional in China). I wanted music to be the element that might take us across barriers and biases, to experience the world, to open our hearts and become truly human.
In 2020, the pandemic blocked me in Italy. I had to leave everything in my life behind. I found myself stuck in impermanence. Morricone died that year. One day, after spending months without canvases, I turned on Garageband and wrote my first notes.
I started learning techniques through any possible source. Stumbling til the spring of 2022, I made my first demo album EXILE and am still working on a series of pieces inspired by the sights of Italy. In Sep. 2022, I published my first film score album for Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
