Wang manifests her abundant creativity through all possible channels on earth. A genre-defying artist, Yawen has created a body of work in the realms of music composition, gallery installation, performance art, musical theatre, music for dance, radio play, and film. Her representative works include Urinetown, The Musical! (Jessie Richardson Award, Best Production, 2007), Made in China (CBC/BBC Radio, 2004), Excursion (Jessie Nomination, Outstanding Original Musical, 1998), The Peach Project (cross-cultural opera, 2001) and The Difficult Mountain Paths of Szechwan (National Taiwan Symphony New Composition winner, 1992). She was the recipient of the explorPERFORMANCE Award 2005, and has been a frequent nominee for various awards, including The Future Generation’s Millennium Award (Canada Council for the Arts, 2000) and the AMSSA Riasat Ali Khan Diversity Award (2005), which recognize and celebrate her contribution in the Arts, Culture and Diversity.
Fully staged Multimedia performance, recorded live with the Madrigal Singers of Vancouver Community College, directed by Gerald van Wyck and conducted by Jin Zhang, at the Roundhouse, Oct. 2008. zheng performed by previous member Gelina Jiang
Life, Death, Tears, Dream(2005) - MP3 link
Recorded live with the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador Chamber Choir, conducted by Amy Henderson, at the D. F. Cook Recital Hall on Oct 11, 2007
In a set of four vignettes, based on the four short poems by Taiwanese contemporary poet Hsiung Hung, the piece completes itself as a song cycle - both musically and philosophically. The first two movements are performed continuously in cycles: life-death-life-death-life. The poetic ideas in the text inspired the musical structure and evocates Gamelan music. This piece was commissioned by the Egret Music Centre to perform with the Orchid Ensemble.
Underwater Chinatown (2007)
composed for Triaspora
Della’s Different Train(2003) - excerpt MP3 link BC Arts Council Commission Recorded live at The Roundhouse, January 2004 Self Produced Concert "A Contemporary Chinese New Year" zheng performed by previous member Mei Han
The inspiration of this composition came unexpectedly out of a series of interviews/documentaries the composer was undertaking for the BB C/CBC radio play on Chinese Diaspora in summer 2003. Among these fascinating, yet untold, stories of Chinese-Canadian women, is the poignant story of Della Tse and her mother Jenny Chan, both Cantonese Opera Singers whose lives of constant change ended up constant stuck. Della’s spoken words sampled from the interview forms the non-linear narrative here. This voice rides on a number of different train sounds collected/recorded across Canada: Canadian Diesel Trains, Go Trains, CPR-VIA and the Toronto Subway. The rhythmic nature of the train tracks provides the ‘click track’ bedding on the tape part, allowing the cross-cultural instrumentation of zheng, erhu and marimba to add further flights to this diasporadic voyage. Traditional Cantonese Opera melodies and percussion bridges are employed to imbue a sense of authenticity. While this is Della’s Different Trains, it owes much to Steve Reich’s Different Trains (1988) for that first trigger in inspiration.
