In honour of Dr. Roydon Tse being appointed Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at the University Saskatchewan, we’re revisiting his conversation with CMC Prairie Director Janna Sailor, as they discussed his newest projects, including a performance with the Kensington Sinfonia back in June!
Early Musical Influences
Janna Sailor: How do you describe yourself as an artist and creator?
Roydon Tse: I find myself as a pathfinder with composing. It’s almost like I’m in a dark room, trying to look for a light switch to turn on, so I can see the rest of the path, and then make it a reality for me.
With every project I start, there’s a bit of excitement in exploring where I could go, as I try to find the best path forward that makes sense of my artistic vision, hopefully speaking to the audience, and they can get something from my music. So in a way, yes, I think that right now, I would say that. Maybe I’ll change my answer in the future.
Janna Sailor: Absolutely, as you evolve.
What kinds of influences and things can we hear in your music that are both the result of years of training, but also the result of your personal life experience?
Roydon Tse: I started as a pianist; not a very good pianist, and I quickly realized that my gifts lie in composition. With piano and violin, these instruments have a great history and background. I drew on my experience with Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, and molded it into what I feel represents me as a composer and as an artist. Then I discovered that there are composers like myself, who are looking at their cultural roots and heritage.
After I finished my education, I decided I wanted to explore it further and started asking myself “What does it mean to be a Chinese-Canadian composer? What kind of sounds are there, what kind of stories, songs, melodies, are out there?”. There are quite a lot actually, but I just never really had the chance to discover that. So I had a few trips. I went to China, I went to the Shanghai Conservatory, for example to premiere a piece, but I also learned a lot from the musicians there, and learned about the sounds of the Chinese orchestra and what those are, and it’s very fascinating. So over time I took those sounds and maybe incorporated a bit of that into my sound world, which I continually build, edit, and add as a composer.
Janna Sailor: It’s a lifelong evolution and we’re always expanding as artists. And tell me about that, was that kind of a rediscovery of your Chinese heritage musically, or was that something that was very much part of you growing up?
Roydon Tse: It was almost a new discovery, because growing up in Hong Kong, the music curriculum was Western-based, despite being on Chinese land, in a Chinese city, where most people were Chinese. After leaving, I started further exploring my identity as a Chinese composer, and asking myself what that meant to me musically, and personally. Because I want to use the word Chinese composer, it can be a bit of a blanket term, which doesn’t necessarily speak to the same thing for every other Chinese composer. There’s such a variety of voices and approaches to art, and I wanted to figure out what that’s like to me first. Like what is the authentic way to express that in my music? I’d never really had that training, so once I left school, I started doing more research.
Current Projects and Collaborations
Janna Sailor: Tell us about some of your current projects and collaborations, and what we can listen for and watch for as you broaden your musical horizons.
Roydon Tse: I’ll talk about two projects. My concerto for string quartet and large orchestra Restless World Anew was co-commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphony and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. I had been part of Gabriela’s cohort of composers learning about climate change, activism and social change, and at the end, she approached me about the opportunity to write for this group.
I love writing and working with large ensembles, because there’s just so many colors and so many things. In that piece, I was experimenting with a giant palette. It’s a triple-wind orchestra, the string quartet, 4.3.3.1, timpani+2, piano – a lot of things to play around with. In addition, I love working with harmonies, and that’s been a main love of mine for a long time. I love tonality, but I also love the in-betweens of tonality. For example, “what would it sound like if we put C major, A-flat major, E-flat minor together, and they all come in and out like that?” To me, it’s like painting with sound. With Restless World Anew, I was expanding how that would feel in an orchestral setting, where harmonies are bleeding in and out, and you’re not really sure where you are, because the situation and the landscape keeps moving.
Another collaboration was a piece that I just finished actually; it’s a piece called Wok Hei, which is Chinese for breath of wok, where you turn on the gas on a stove, you get a lot of sizzling. When that sizzling reaches a certain level, and ingredients are added, it creates this kind of energy, which they love in Chinese cooking, because it adds a bit of char to it. It’s almost like you’re burning or charring the food, and chefs will often refer to and use it. And so this piece was written for the Kensington Sinfonia with Gai Lan ensemble, as a duo concertante for dizi, which is a Chinese flute, and cello.
The cool thing is the ensembles are being brought together, so there’s the string orchestra plus this Chinese instrumentation to it. It circles back to my desire to learn more about, and write for Chinese instruments. I knew how to write for sheng through another project and I knew how to write for erhu through another. This project allowed me to put together what I’ve learned so far.
In addition, I wanted to shape the narrative around this particular recipe called mapo tofu, a spicy tofu from Sichuan Province. Although I can’t say I can cook it very well, I wanted to turn that into something musically driven, and using those instruments as ingredients and co-creators of this dish in this piece. So that happened in a very short time frame after I finished that previous concerto.
Janna Sailor: What does that mean to have that ability now to fuse your two worlds together; your cultural world, and this world of classical music that you’ve been so highly trained in?
Roydon Tse: I think Bright Sheng said that as a Chinese American composer, he found that he had a spectrum of “Chinese-ness”, which is an interesting way to put it, right? Like he can turn up the Chinese-ness, he can revert to a more balanced, nuanced approach, or he can go full Western tonality. I find that to be interesting, because it’s not a fixed identity, and just like every one of us, identity grows with time and experience, as we add or subtract the things we like and dislike.
I think that’s the same with composition, where every project is a different one because we grow. So I find that as I learn more, I’m building a kind of a palette, of different colors. It’s not just red, green, and yellow anymore. It’s red, green, and yellow, plus 20 other things that I can use. That’s what I love about composition and creativity is that we’re just constantly able to bring things into this universe and build sound out of it and build different narratives and stories out of it. It’s about widening the kind of scope of expression, which is what I love, but also making that still accessible for people, so that audiences can relate to it somehow, and can find their way into the story and sound that I’m trying to express.
Janna Sailor: And what is the reaction from your Chinese community, to these hybrid works?
Roydon Tse: Some of the performances that I have been with the Chinese community, most of them have been in more traditional, say, concert, orchestral hall type situations where there might not have been a lot of Chinese there, but there are a lot of regular concert goers. There was one time I invited a family friend from Hong Kong to a premiere by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and it was a piece that had nothing to do with my cultural roots. It was a piece called Unrelenting Sorrow, and it was a piece about the losses during COVID. So a heavier piece, with no particular Chinese or folk influence, but she really enjoyed it. That’s what all I want for my music, whether it’s a Chinese, Indian or another community, that they get something from it.
Influential Mentors and Turning Points
Janna Sailor: So earlier, you mentioned Gabriela Lena Frank; incredible influence on the compositional world, thinker, and social activist. So many things we could just have a whole conversation about her. But that seems like that was just an incredible opportunity for you. If we could just circle back to that and perhaps some other kind of critical opportunities and turning points in your career that were really influential on setting you on your current path?
Roydon Tse: Let’s talk about Gabriela, because as you said, she’s an amazing person, very warm, and she shows exceptional support and rapport with the younger generation of composers. Throughout my education, I’ve had the fortune of working with teachers who have been extremely supportive, and who have offered guidance inside academy and outside the academy. But Gabrielle is the first composer who’s doing it on her own, like she’s got her own thing. She’s not attached to a university or institution, yet she’s making it work, and bringing all these composers across North America. First of all, she writes amazing music, where she’s found her voice after years of hard work and refinement. She’s now at a stage in her career, where she’s working with the Met, and working with the top orchestras in the world, and she’s chosen to share her time and expertise with us, which is a huge blessing. I’ve been very fortunate to be part of. She lives in rural California with this deep passion for the environment. Over the last few years, fire has scarred the landscape and she’s one of those first-hand witnesses who’s talking about, and wanting us to do something about it. In my experience of Gabriela, she’s always talking about how to speak for it. but not in a kind of prescriptive way like “you need to go do this”. She’s opening up the different possibilities of speaking about it, while also creating a community with performers like-minded, artists, and thinkers who can come together and work something out. This was all during the pandemic as well. She started the academy a few years prior, and then it was during the pandemic that I joined her academy. We had a lot of Zoom sessions, and eventually went out to California to meet her and her community. Again, a major turning point, because I just finished my doctorate at that time and after school, you had that kind of community. You had certain schedules and people you needed to meet. Meeting Gabriela, taking that path, and journeying with her and her cohort was a way to continue to build community, continue to learn about the environment, learn about music, and what it means to write music in today’s scene.
Another pivotal moment was in 2017, going back to China. I came to Canada with my family in 2007, finished high school there, and stayed within the country, not really travelling many places. Then in 2017, I was invited by the Shanghai Philharmonic to write a work for a Chinese instrument and orchestra. I chose the sheng, a handheld bamboo organ, where you blow into it and can create these amazing harmonic effects. The invitation was sent in January, and the premiere in November, so I had six or seven months to write the piece. As a break over the summer, I flew back to China for the first time since I had moved. First of all, it was amazing to see how advanced and developed everything was. They have these amazing halls, great infrastructure and a lot of interesting classical music; for me it was about exploring how those instruments could work together with the orchestra. It was a piece that I spent a good amount of time thinking about and sketching. After that experience, I was very pleased with the results of it. It sounded in my mind like what I wanted to, which sometimes doesn’t happen in composition, because I feel I don’t have time. But in this case, I managed to get this piece to where I wanted to, which I was very happy about. It was my first piece that I felt I had found a language, and a way to combine both the eastern and western sides in a harmonious way. After that piece, I felt confident that I could do this, and explore more that going forward. Since then, I’ve had a lot of different opportunities to write for Chinese instruments or even just working with Chinese texts and Chinese poems within a Western concert music context.
I’ll mention one more, and of course I’ll go back in time. At the very beginning, the most pivotal moment was working with composer John Estacio, the composer-in-residence of the Edmonton Symphony at the time. When I was in high school, he selected me for their Young Composer project and that was my first taste into the world of orchestra, getting a sense of what that means and writing for orchestra. So I heard the piece performed by the Edmonton Symphony and that’s the reason why I am here today, being able to write music, and because that inspired me to go further and say, okay, if I can do that, then maybe I should seriously consider what that means in a professional context.
Janna Sailor: You’ve touched on a couple of mentoring programs for composers. Can you tell us a little bit about what makes those so impactful and what are ingredients of really great composer mentorship?
Roydon Tse: I think it starts with the mentor being generous, willing to share their experience, kind, and patient. Students might struggle in one area, but show strength in another. As teachers, you gotta be aware of that, be able to identify strengths and weaknesses, and then encourage those strengths to continue to be built, disciplined and a little bit critical, but, in a kind of a firm way so that they can grow as a holistic person. I believe at different stages, you need different people and mentors who will support you in your weaknesses. But in general, I find that the most impactful experiences were from people who are extremely generous, who are down to earth, who are willing to share their wealth of experience with younger, less experienced people like myself. In an academic setting, you’re meeting with a professor in a classroom setting, but also outside of the classroom, as people too. When you relate with professors, established composers and mentors, they are usually super generous people and very supportive of everything that you do in and outside of the classroom. That’s what I found to be the most impactful.
Teaching Philosophy and Student Potential
Janna Sailor: So what kinds of things from your experience both lived and compositionally, do you endeavor to pass on to your students?
Roydon Tse: I see that every student has their own unique potential, their own unique interests, and passions, which make them artists in their own right. Some people want to be teachers, some people want to be performers, and some people wanna be composers. But they all bring a special kind of passion to that thing that makes them a teacher, composer, or a performer. For me, I try to identify that and encourage it as much as possible.
So I think just trying to identify what those students are interested in, so I can find the right way to guide, and I think that’s the main thing I want to do. In addition, I think talking about how to be a good musician as a professor is key.
I taught both composition and musicianship at the University of Calgary last year. It can be general musicianship, especially where we’re sight singing, playing rhythms, or dictating harmony, and some of these things the students don’t like to do. Even then, we can distill certain concepts from that exercise, and show what we can learn from it. I also believe it is important to teach them that music is not supposed to be perfect. Some of the best music is made by very imperfect people who are not perfectly in tune, and yet they managed to speak to hundreds and thousands of people. And I think that’s something that’s important, especially in a school academic setting where grades are everything, and people want to be perfect. It’s good to strive for achievement, but not at the expense of artistry and the essence of music, which I think is about communicating on a soul-to-soul basis with other people. You don’t need perfect intonation, you don’t need perfect harmony or even perfect anything. You can just communicate by being yourself with a few simple things. So I think it’s always reminding students that, yes, this is hard, this, you might not be perfect at this, but you don’t need to be perfect at this to be a musician.
Janna Sailor: And not just students, for all of us.
Roydon Tse: At every stage, right? There’s the pressure of you gotta deliver a certain product for commissioners, for performers, and then realizing that there’s no such thing as the perfect piece. Even Beethoven made mistakes, and Beethoven had to rewrite and rewrite.
The Art of Collaboration
Janna Sailor: I’m not sure if we talk about this enough as creators and co-creators, but what does a successful collaboration look like between, say a composer and an ensemble or a composer, and an individual artist that you’re writing for? What ingredients go into that experience to make it really work?
Roydon Tse: I think the collaboration is about the relationship between you and that person. Having a good relationship means being free to have that discourse of agreeing, disagreeing, finding common ground, where you feel like you are free to express your fears, but also the positives and negatives in any kind of project. Sometimes it’s the chemistry; sometimes it takes a bit of trying things out to see if that works with that person, and if it does, great. But if it doesn’t, that’s also great, because you don’t have to make it work; sometimes, that’s that particular relationship. So I think in collaboration, it’s about finding that comfort of working with someone where we can speak our minds and can both share in that safe and collaborative environment.
On top of that, I believe in speaking the same musical or emotional language. I love working with poets and librettists who have a vision of something, where we don’t necessarily talk in melody or harmony or specific musical things. Instead, we discuss color or the “hue of emotion” that we want to use. I find that very exciting because when you tell me, “oh, I want this to be a darker, heavier scene”, suddenly I’ve got musical ideas and we can both contribute our unique artistic techniques and skills to this unified story or color or message. So I think finding that language where we can talk and share ideas freely, For me, that is the key of collaboration.
Recent Premieres and Audience Experience
Janna Sailor: As you prepare for these wonderful new works to be premiered and launched out into the world, what do you hope that people hear, and take away from their experience of your music?
Roydon Tse: I think each piece is different. I’ll mention the recent premieres that I had. So I was in Toronto in April, with the Esprit Orchestra, and they performed a piece I wrote a couple of years ago called Stepwise, for chamber orchestra. The piece is basically a series of variations on a harmonic progression, and so it is essentially a 21st century chaconne. In that piece, I just wanted to have fun, and I just wanted performers and the There are pieces that I write that are a bit more heavy – a bit deeper in terms of the colors and emotions that I want to express, but there’s some pieces that are just meant to be light and fun, hopefully. So in this piece, I had a lot of fun writing it, because I was just doodling in the playground of chords and orchestration. In contrast, Restless World Anew, the concerto for string quartet and orchestra, was a piece about our relationship with the environment and a three-part symphony/requiem about climate change, which has darker undertones. So it starts off with something that’s a bit more desolate, growing slowly, and turns into something more hopeful and radiant at the end. That kind of journey takes a bit more time and a bit more investment on the audience’s side, because it’s tougher to digest. To sit with that discomfort over a prolonged period of time requires a bit more investment, and a bit more patience from them. So two different types of pieces that premiered days from each other, but I think two different experiences that audiences took away from.
Future Projects and Artistic Direction
Janna Sailor: What is next for you as an artist? You have some commissions and things that you mentioned, but as you grow and continue, you’re still early on in your career. Where do you see yourself heading?
Roydon Tse: That’s also a very good question, and I’m at a point where I. In need of reflection. Because it’s been such a busy year, and now that the school year has wound down, I feel like it’s time to take stock, and think about what my next projects are.
So I did finish those two previous pieces, which took up a lot of energy and time, and I’ve got a bit of a break before kind of the next thing, which is something with Tapestry Opera. We’re doing Lib Labs in July, and before that, I feel like I’m in a place where I can just breathe a little bit, and figure out what I want to say. I’ve always liked the idea of variety in a composition life where I would write an orchestral piece and then do something vocal, do something chamber, do something for the solo, and then back and forth. Because it’s great to write one orchestral piece, but then if you were to ask to write 13 in a row, without any breaks, it gets tough because you want to say something different each time and you don’t wanna repeat yourself. And so I like the idea of variety in that composition of life.
I also like the idea of space and rest; in life as well. I feel like we all need to recharge, and just take a deep breath. So that’s where I’m gonna head towards next. Just rest, and then hopefully come back. I love the idea of working with text, and am even thinking of operatic ideas in the future, because with opera you already have a story, which allows you to think about sounds that will organically fit the narrative. I like the collaborative aspect of it, when you’re working with another person, first with a librettist and then with a director, versus when you’re writing instrumental or purely concert music, it can be a very solitary experience. You are working on this piece, and then you’re gonna hand it in to the commissioner once you’re done. I’m looking forward to collaborations, to working with text and voice a bit more, and then coming back to orchestral, chamber music, all these great things I’ve been doing a lot of already.
Janna Sailor: It’s been so great to take a deeper dive into your music and your output. Where can people find your work in the next little while?
Roydon Tse: It’s been wonderful to talk to you, and have these deep conversations about creativity and music. I’ve got a website: roydentse.com You’ll hear some occasional updates and some new pieces as they come out there.
To listen to the full conversation: visit MUSING here.