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mOthertongue: Lived Experience in Asian America

Piedmont Center for the Arts
Piedmont, CA

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Nov 30, 2025 5:30 PM

Online Sales end at 1:30; Tickets at the door will cost $40 cash/check

Nivel de admisión	Precio	Cantidad
General Admission	$35.00 ($38.59 con tarifa de servicio)

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Name: mOthertongue: Lived Experience in Asian America
Start: 2025-11-30T17:30
End: 2025-11-30T19:30
Location: Piedmont Center for the Arts

mOthertongue: Lived Experience in Asian America

Ravel's "Asie" (from Scheherazade) juxtaposed with three (3) new song cycles by Asian-American composers (Justine F. Chen, Melissa Dunphy, & Kamala Sankaram) on Asian American texts. Stay after the concert for a Q&A with the performers and light refreshments!

Images of Asia have long sparked the European musical imagination. As described by European poets and composers, these images include exotic landscapes and fetishized female figures, stereotypes that remain even as the Asian diaspora has taken root and claimed citizenship all over the world.
With the three newly-commissioned song cycles by Asian American composers, this recital asserts Asian American lived experience from the perspective of those of us who live it. As contrasted with Maurice Ravel's "Asie," a prime example of European musical Orientalism, these new songs describe the joys, pains, contradictions, and pride we experience as Asians living in this land we call home.
The three song cycles were co-commissioned by soprano Jennifer Lien and the Cincinnati Song Initiative, with support from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This program premiered in October 2024 at the Schubert Club in St. Paul, MN. A two-year tour is planned, capped by a recording project in Summer 2026. An audience talkback after the performance is offered as part of this projects educational outreach.

THE PERFORMERS:
Soprano Jennifer Lien, lauded for her sonorous, clear voice and her dramatic range, has been seen on opera and concert stages in California, Florida, New York, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Singapore. She is a keen collaborator in chamber music, a proponent of contemporary music, and is known for her innovative recital programming. The 20232024 season saw Lien on tour with two projects: the world premiere and tour of Wendy Durrwachter's "Surface Displacements" song cycle in Minnesota, and the recital "Juxtapositions: European Orientalism, Asian America, & Asia" in North Carolina with pianist Douglas Jurs.
Lien was a fiscal year 2024 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board to co-commission three song cycles from three Asian American composers set to Asian American texts, and to embark on a recital tour in Minnesota.
In August 2022, Lien was featured in Messiaen's "Harawi" with the Sing Song Club in Singapore. In June 2022, Lien made her Lyric Opera of the North debut as the Mother in "Hansel and Gretel." In November 2021, Lien was featured in a virtual concert of French Orientalist music for the San Francisco International Piano Festival with pianist Gwendolyn Mok. In February 2020, Lien appeared as soprano soloist with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in Joe Hisaishi's "East Land Symphony." During the pandemic season, her performance in Poulenc's one-woman opera "La Voix Humaine," originally performed in 2018 to wide acclaim with the Singapore Symphony Orchestras chamber series, was streamed internationally.
Lien has appeared in operatic roles with companies including New Opera Singapore, West Bay Opera, Mission City Opera, Oakland Opera Theater, West Marin Music Festival, Berkeley Opera, Solo Opera, San Francisco Lyric Opera, and Central Florida Lyric Opera. Oratorio engagements include Haydn's "The Creation" and "The Seasons;" Saint-Saëns' "Christmas Oratorio," Handel's "Messiah;" Vivaldi's "Gloria;" Haydn's "Mass in Time of War;" and Mozart's "Requiem." She has premiered numerous works by contemporary composers, and has performed in recital series in Minnesota, New York, California, and New Hampshire, and at the prestigious Esplanade arts center in Singapore.
Lien made her operatic debut in the role of Papagena (The Magic Flute) with Singapore Lyric Opera, where she also appeared as Princess Stephanie in "The Student Prince." She received further operatic training as a resident artist with Central Florida Lyric Opera, a young artist with the Seagle Festival, an apprentice artist with Bel Canto at Caramoor, and as a member of the OperaWorks Advanced Accelerated Singer program. Since the pandemic, Lien has been an active member of Bel Canto Boot Camp. Outside of music, Lien is a co-founder of the Twin Ports APIDA Collective, an organization to advocate for and raise awareness of the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American community in the Duluth-Superior region.
Returning to music after an early career as a newspaper journalist, Lien first began her vocal studies at Dartmouth College, where she was an English major. Under the guidance of soprano Erie Mills, she later received her Master of Arts in Music at San Jose State University. Lien holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Voice and an M.A. in Historical Musicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A seasoned vocal educator, Lien has taught voice to majors and non-majors at UW-Madison and at Beloit College. She currently teaches at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, MN. (see https://www.jenniferliensoprano.com)

Gwendolyn Mok is a leading pedagogue, lecturer, soloist and highly acclaimed recording artist. Born in New York City, Ms. Mok has appeared in many of the world's leading concert halls, including the Barbican, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Davies Symphony Hall, and the Hong Kong Performing Arts Center. She is frequently invited to play and record with major international orchestras, such as the London Symphony, the Philharmonia, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Beijing Philharmonic Orchestra and the Residency Orchestra of the Hague.
Ms. Mok is a recording artist for Nonesuch/Elektra, Musical Heritage Society, Musician Showcase Recordings, Cala Records, and EMI. Her highly acclaimed debut CD with the Philharmonia of Ravel's "Piano Concerto in G Major" on the Cala label was nominated for an Alternative Edison award. A second Cala recording of Saint-Saëns' "Africa Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra" with the London Philharmonic has been equally applauded. Three solo CDs, "Ravel Revealed" (Ravel's piano works), "Brahms: Late Piano Works," and "Legacy, the Spirit of Beethoven" were recorded on historic pianos for the Musicians' Showcase Recording label. All (3) CDs received outstanding reviews and are broadcast frequently around the world. Recently, two new CDs have been released: "Poldowski Art Songs" with soprano Angelique Zuluaga and pianist Gwendolyn Mok on the Delos label, and "EKTA Trilogy," featuring Mok as soloist on EKTA II, a concerto written for her by composer Brent Heisinger.
As a chamber musician, Ms. Mok appears regularly in the San Francisco Symphony Chamber Music Series, as well as in the San Jose Chamber Society and the Sacramento Chamber Society series. She collaborates often with members of the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. A popular soloist with Symphony Silicon Valley, Ms. Mok co-produced and appeared in four sold-out performances of the "Gershwin Radio Hour." In 2016, she was named President's Scholar by San Jose State University, the highest honor given to an outstanding faculty member for their scholarship and research. Mok was also presented with the Artistic Achievement Award by the College of Humanities & the Arts in 2008.
Ms. Mok began her studies at the Juilliard School of Music, completed her undergraduate work at Yale University, and earned her Master's and Doctorate at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is currently Coordinator of Keyboard Studies at San Jose State University and maintains a busy performing and recording schedule.

THE SONG CYCLE COMPOSERS:
Justine F. Chen: Theater is that collective experience in which participants gather to explore both the richness and the injustice of human experience; it is where together, we mourn and celebrate. Chen's work strives to inform and engage, and to bring forth the reinvention of our expectations for our society.
Always fascinated by the expressive possibilities of dramatic forms, Taiwanese-American composer Justine F. Chen draws inspiration from animation, film, theater, classical Indian dance and music, ballet, and contemporary dance. Recent projects include a new chamber opera, "Seven Sisters" with librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, a choral work for "The Crossing" on data-mining (text by Jena Osman), a short film opera on modern-day heroes with Jacqueline Goldfinger, a song cycle with the haunting poetry of Ophelia Hu Kinney for soprano Jennifer Lien, an opera with librettist Jacqueline Goldfinger inspired by the oldest ballad the "Twa Sisters," and "The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing" (librettist David Simpatico) commissioned by American Lyric Theater, premiered by Chicago Opera Theater in March, 2023.
She has been commissioned and performed by WQXR, The Crossing, New York City Opera, New York City Ballet, The Juilliard School, JACK Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, New York Festival of Song, Washington Ballet, Long Leaf Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Tapestry Opera, Banff Music Centre, Merola Opera, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic. (https://www.justinefchen.com )

Born in Australia and raised in an immigrant family, Melissa Dunphy herself immigrated to the United States in 2003 and has since become an award-winning and acclaimed composer specializing in vocal, political, and theatrical music. She first came to national attention when her large-scale work "The Gonzales Cantata" was featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, National Review, and on Fox News and the Rachel Maddow Show, where host Rachel Maddow described it as "the coolest thing you've ever seen on this show." Other notable works include the song cycle "Tesla's Pigeon," which won first place in the NATS Art Song Composition Award, and her choral work "What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?" which won the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Competition and has been performed nationally by ensembles including Chanticleer and Cantus.
Dunphy is the recipient of a 2020 Opera America Discovery Grant for "Alice Tierney," an opera commissioned by Oberlin Conservatory which premiered in 2023 at Oberlin and Opera Columbus. She has been composer-in-residence for the Immaculata Symphony Orchestra, Volti, and the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus, and her commissions include works for the BBC Singers, VOCES8, Mendelssohn Chorus, and the Kennett Symphony. Dunphy is also a Barrymore Award-nominated theater composer and is Director of Music Composition for the O'Neill National Puppetry Conference.
Dunphy has a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.M. from West Chester University, and is on faculty at Rutgers University. She is president of the board of directors for Wildflower Composers and serves on the board of Lyric Fest. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Matt; the Dunphys are currently the owners and developers of the Hannah Callowhill Stage, a new performance venue in Old City Philadelphia which they hope to open in 2022, and co-hosts of the popular podcast "The Boghouse" about their adventures in Philadelphia colonial archaeology. (https://melissadunphy.com/)

Praised as one of the most exciting opera composers in the country (Washington Post), composer Kamala Sankaram moves freely between the worlds of experimental music and contemporary opera. Known for her work pushing the boundaries of the operatic form, she has created operas as varied as "The Last Stand," a 10-hour opera created for the trees of Prospect Park, Brooklyn; "Looking at You," a techno-noir featuring live datamining of the audience and a chorus of 25 singing tablet computers; "All Decisions Will Be Made by Consensus," one of the first live performances over Zoom; and "The Parksville Murders," the worlds first virtual reality opera. Recent commissions include works for the Glimmerglass Festival (where she was the 2022 Composer-in-Residence), Washington National Opera, the PROTOTYPE Festival, and Creative Time, among others. As a biracial Indian-American and trained sitarist, Kamala has also drawn on Indian classical music in many of her works, including "Thumbprint," "A Rose," "Monkey and Francine in the City of Tigers", and "the Jungle Book." Select awards, grants and residencies include: Composer-in-Residence at the Kaufman Music Center, Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, HEREArtist Residency Program, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center.
Also an accomplished performer, Kamala has been hailed as "an impassioned soprano with blazing high notes" (Wall Street Journal). Notable collaborations include Anthony Braxtons "Trillium E," "Trillium J," and "GTM" (Syntax) 2017; Meredith Monks "Atlas," with the LA Philharmonic, the Wooster Groups "LA DIDONE" (Kaaitheater, Brussels, Edinburgh International Festival, Rotterdam Schouberg, Grand Théâtre de la Ville, Luxembourg, St. Annes Warehouse, NY; REDCAT, Los Angeles), and the PROTOTYPE Festivals THUMBPRINT (Baruch Performing Arts, NY; REDCAT, Los Angeles), among others. Kamala is the leader of Bombay Rickey, an operatic Bollywood surf ensemble whose accolades include two awards for Best Eclectic Album from the Independent Music Awards, the 2018 Mid-Atlantic touring grant, and appearances on WFMU and NPR. Awards, grants and residencies: Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, HEREArtist Residency Program, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center. Dr. Sankaram holds a Ph.D. from the New School and is currently a member of the composition faculties at the Mannes College of Music and SUNY Purchase. (https://www.kamalasankaram.com/)