Sound Check! A Festival of Asian American Music, Sound, and Scholarship
Organized by the Music of Asian America Research Center
In partnership with Wing Luke Museum
Onsite at Wing Luke Museum, Seattle, WA & On Zoom, April 27-29, 2024
On Zoom on May 11, 2024
Festival Home | Registration & Tickets | Invited Artists | Presentation Abstracts & Bios
Schedule (as of April 20, 2024)
ALL TIMES PACIFIC
Saturday, April 27 (Wing Luke Museum)
6:30pm Tour of Sound Check! The Music We Make! exhibit (Special Exhibition Gallery; in-person only)
7:30pm Opening Concert (Ford Foundation Community Hall) featuring:
- Sophiline Cheam-Shapiro (master Cambodian dancer, choreographer and instructor)
- Ami Dang (Punjabi American sitar player, songwriter and ambient musician)
- jason chu (Chinese American rapper and activist)
Sunday, April 28 (Wing Luke Museum and Virtual)
All presentations up until the dinner break are in the Tateuchi Story Theatre and livestreamed.
10:00am Welcome; Growing Up as Young Musicians: Oral Histories by the Music of Asian America Research Center
10:10am Artist Talk: Ami Dang
10:40am Session #1: Afterlifes of the Japanese American Incarceration (Chair: Francis Wong)
- Lei X Ouyang (Swarthmore College), “Kishi Bashi’s Omoiyari: Music, Memory, and Solidarity”
- Nathan Huxtable (UC Riverside), “Marking Model Minority Time: The Politics of Asian American Military Music in Postwar Seattle”
- Noriko Manabe (Indiana University), “Asian American Rap in a Time of Anti-Asian Racism”
11:50am Artist Talk: jason chu
12:20pm Lunch (on your own)
2:00pm Music and Community: Oral Histories by the Music of Asian America Research Center
2:10pm Artist Talk: Jason Nguyen
2:40pm Session #2: Music and Home (Chair: Allan Zheng)
- Maako Shiratori, “Making Jappalachian Music: An Asian Diaspora Community from the Mountains”
- Noah Rosen (Columbia University), Specters of Remittance: Composing the Balikbayan in Original Pilipino Music (OPM)
3:40pm Break
3:55pm Artist Talk: Sophiline Cheam-Shapiro
4:25pm Session #3: Musical Memories (Chair: Eric Hung)
- Ky Nam Nguyen (Florida State University), “The Compositional Techniques of ‘A Vietnamese Mother’s Letter to Nixon for Mezzo-Soprano, Chamber Ensemble, and Live Electronics'”
- Josh Yoon (Expedia Group), “55 Years of North American Taiko”
- A Conversation with Theo Feng
5:40pm Dinner Break (on your own)
7:30pm Centerpiece Concert (Ford Foundation Community Hall) features:
- Leslie Damaso, Ben Ferris & Jason Kutz perform Sirena (an original story conceived by Filipina artist, Leslie Damaso, set within new compositions and contemporary arrangements of kundiman songs of love and freedom)
- Musicians from INTERWOVEN: Sean Wang (violinist) and gamin (multi-instrumentalist specializing in traditional Korean wind instruments)
- Jason Nguyen (đàn bầu virtuoso who creates music that blurs the lines between traditional/contemporary, old/new, and Vietnamese/non-Vietnamese
Monday, April 29 (Wing Luke Museum and Virtual)
All presentations are in Tateuchi Story Theatre and livestreamed.
10:00am Career Challenges: Oral Histories by the Music of Asian America Research Center
10:15am Session #4: Popular Music (chair: Nancy Rao)
- Peng Liu (Truman State University), “Revisiting Asian American Popular Music in the 1970s through a Study of Three Albums”
- Aydin Quach (University of British Columbia), “Emotional Dance Music: Race, Capitalism, and Techno-Orientalism in Asian American Consumption of Electronic Dance Music”
- Viet-Hai Huynh (UC Riverside), “Rolling with the Punches: Asian American Affective Negotiations with Electronic Dance Music”
- Nic Vigilante (Cornell University), “K-Pop as Community: Genre, Identity, and Queer Asian American Nightlife in Los Angeles”
11:55am Lunch (on your own)
1:30pm Pushing New Boundaries: Oral Histories by the Music of Asian America Research Center
1:45pm Session #5: First- and Second-Generation Immigrants, Part 1 (chair: Brian V. Sengdala)
- Artist Talk #4: Musicians from INTERWOVEN–Sean Wang and gamin
- Kathryn Minyoung Cooke (Columbia University), “The Worshiping Bodies of the Silent Exodus: Nunchi Bwa-ing in a Second-Generation Asian American Church”
- Shelley Zhang (Rutgers University), “Conservatory Pathways and New Asian Americans: Immigration, Transnational Memory, and Music Education”
3:15pm Break
3:30pm Session #6: First- and Second-Generation Immigrants, Part 2 (chair: Elaine Andres)
- Artist Talk #5: Leslie Damaso
- Douglas S. Ishii (University of Washington-Seattle), “‘Am I What’s Left?’: The Post-2020 Asian American Legacy of Karen O
4:30pm Closing Remarks
Saturday, May 11 (Virtual Only)
9:20am Welcome
9:30am Session #7: Rediscoveries
- Hedy Law (University of British Columbia), “Rediscovering the Lost Xiqiao: Catalogue Practices and Preservation of Early Cantonese Opera in Vancouver”
- Shuk-Ki Wong, “Beyond the Notes: Affirming Cultural Diversity through Rediscovering Keyboard Works of Asian Living Women Composers”
10:30am Break
10:45am Session #8: Western Classical Music (chair: Eric Hung)
- Chiara Cox, “Evelyn Mandac: The Filipina Soprano who Broke Opera Glass Ceilings”
- Pei-Chen Chen (Toronto), “Keys to a New Chapter: Chinese Immigrant Adults Learning Piano”
11:45am Break
12:15pm Session #9: Through Composers’ Eyes
- Chieh Huang (University of California Irvine), “Weaving Worlds: The Interlacing of Atayal Language and Heritage into Contemporary Composition”
- Teerath Majumder (Columbia College Chicago), “The Interpreting and Intervening Audience: Progressing from the Spectacle of Performance to the Social Realities of Performing”
1:15pm Break
1:30pm Session #10: Popular Music and Asian Americans (chair: Kim Tran)
- James Gui (Columbia University), “BIAS NYC: K-pop Edits in the Brooklyn Underground Club Scene”
- Rebecca Chhay (UCLA), “Humor and Genocide: Examining Hella Chluy’s Music Videos”
2:00pm Closing Remarks