You earned your Ph.D. in scoring for visual media arts at UCLA. Tell us more about your experience; what drove you to pursue further studies in this field and how does it add to your projects?

I’ve always been interested in writing for pictures because I grew up going to galleries almost on a daily basis, and relating visuals with music is something very natural and fun for me. On the other hand, I love writing concert music, which made UCLA the perfect place for me. There, I studied with incredible mentors in both film and concert composition while also taking film classes from the school of film (TFT). These film classes were extremely beneficial in helping me understanding films and understanding what other people on the project are doing. After taking these classes and attempting to do what they do, I respect everyone even more because I now know how challenging their jobs are. 

The Ph.D. program required a solid background in music history and music theory, with experience in electronic music, other than skills in composing. That background has been incredibly useful in film scoring. For instance, when I scored Hunting Rabbits (dir. Kayla Keener), a short animation set in the Medieval era, my studies helped me quickly determine the musical direction and instrumentation. 

You’re also a professor at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music! What’s it like teaching film scoring? Has your approach to scoring evolved or changed since you began teaching? 

It’s really quite wonderful. There’s nothing better than sharing your passion with a group of talented students who are also excited about it. We cover everything—history, scoring process, technology, business, and, of course, the function of music in different film genres. I try to include everything I wish I had known at their age. We watch and analyze a lot of films and film scores, and they also score short clips each week—just like I did as a student.

Other than the film scoring courses, I also teach music production and composition. There are plugins that, to be honest, if I wasn’t teaching, I would never remember to use. Sometimes, when I’m scoring, I suddenly recall a technique or a plugin I taught in class and realize it could work for my own projects. The same happens with my composition class. I remember once I was teaching Bach’s Agnus Dei from his B Minor Mass. At the time, I was also scoring a short film which the director and I have been looking for the right opening cue for quite a while. While we were listening in class, I all of sudden have found the right tone for the film—I mean, it’s quite different from the B Minor Mass, but without teaching that class, I would not have thought of that idea. 

I wouldn’t say my approach has changed, but I have definitely become even more open-minded about a lot of things. For instance, because of our program, I have started writing songs again, which in the past was only an exercise I had done as a kid studying composition. 

Tell us more about juggling between writing for concerts and writing for visual media, especially since you started out as a concert composer. How different and similar are both worlds? 

I love doing both. Writing concert music is more like keeping a personal diary, which is solely about what I want to express or create, whereas writing for film is more about what the story is and how my music can help the story to be better told. So I try to have as many conversations with my directors as possible. Often, I find these conversations so incredibly inspiring because the directors have a much clearer vision than I would of the film. 

My creative process for film and concert music actually share a lot of similarities. I always start with a blank piece of paper, drawing shapes I think the music should be in, and then I will go back many times to edit the music, although I don’t handwrite most of my film scores as I do with concert music. 

When I write my concert music, I like to first hear it inside my mind, so I would imagine the piece while I take a walk or just sitting at my desk. Sometimes, I do the same with my film scores. If there’s a particular cue that either doesn’t come to me right away, or it’s so special that I feel it needs something refreshing (or just different from what I normally do), I’d go without looking at the picture, and just try to imagine the scenes in my head, and imagine how the music would sound like. 

Out of 600 applicants, you were 1 of 20 picked for the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Awards which are given to young composers in the concert music category. Congratulations on this achievement! Tell us more about your composition Rays of the After-rain Evening Sun, how was it inspired, when did you write it?

Thank you! Rays of the After-rain Evening Sun is an orchestra realization of my piano piece Rest Time, which is the last piece of my 15-piece cycle Time Cycle for solo piano. As I was writing the piano version, I knew it had to have an orchestra version, so I orchestrated the piece in the summer of 2020. 

The title, Rays of the After-rain Evening Sun (晚晴 “Wan-qing”), is taken from one of my favorite Chinese poets Li Shangyin’s poem of the same title. I was especially touched by the last sentence of the poem–“越鸟巢干后，归飞体更轻。The wet nest will be dry (before finally falls the Night); Now, a lighter, carefree southern bird returns home in flight.” Here, the concept of “flying back home” is especially important to me. It means for people to find their true self instead of continuing to seek after the outer world, which is quite inspiring and touching to me as a young composer.  

It was premiered by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2023 as part of the American Composers Orchestra’s Earshot program—an amazing experience! 

You worked on the award-winning documentary Pianoman; as a classical pianist what was it like working on a feature where your instrument is central to the story? Did it influence your composition process? If so, how?

The director of the film, Sunny Liu, is actually my friend from high school—we both went to Interlochen as piano majors, so piano means so much to both of us. Funny enough, since Sunny has been in the piano world for so long, many members of our team were also pianists. 

Well, the score uses a lot of piano. At first, we thought about limiting it to a piano-only score. I mean, you can always make all kinds of sounds with the piano—like Jerry Goldsmith did in Chinatown. But since it is a documentary, the last thing I’d want to do is to create a score that disturbs the story. So we ended up also using other instruments—flute, oboe, cello, mallet percussions, guitar, synth—on top of the piano, of course. 

Sunny also asked me to write some Latin-influenced music, as that’s part of the story, and that was really fun. Sunny gave me a lot of creative freedom when we were working on this film, and she really wanted actual music—not just background textures. As a result, several cues could easily be adapted into concert pieces.

How has being born in China and moving to the US to study at the age of 13 influenced your character and your music as well? 

I attended boarding schools since I was 13, with friends from all over the world, so I was exposed to all kinds of music from the moment I woke up because my friends would turn music on in the morning. So I think one of the biggest influences would be that I’m very open to all kinds of music and I always try to appreciate other cultures even if they are very different from the ones I’m more familiar with.

In terms of writing music, I think many of my concert pieces carry the sound world of Western and Eastern cultures. Because of my own experience, I really do trust that music can bring people with different backgrounds together, and that has been one of my goals of writing—to use my music as a bridge between Western and Eastern cultures. 

Since you’ve worked on so many films with such a variety of musical styles, do you find that you have a favorite style or genre of film to write for?

I actually really enjoy scoring all kinds of genres—in fact, my Ph.D. dissertation focused on scoring for different film genres. But if I had to pick a favorite, I’d say fantasy. 

Interview by Kati Falk-Flores

Check out the directory page for Jasmine here!