Q&A with Visiting Artist Lei Liang The acclaimed composer discusses his collaboration with Boston Conservatory, his work as a research artist, and what it means to listen creatively.
By
Sarah Godcher Murphy
May 7, 2024
Boston Conservatory visiting artist Lei Liang
Bill Wadman
Creative listening is at the core of composer Lei Liang's work. His 2018 composition A Thousand Mountains, a Million Streams imagined the sonic world of a Chinese landscape painting; and his most recent piece for orchestra, Six Seasons, stemmed from a partnership with oceanographers who captured the sounds of seasonal ice forming on the surface of the Arctic Ocean. These field recordings provide invaluable data to research scientists; but to a composer with an ear for metaphor, they are the sound of ice being born -and a wellspring of musical inspiration that Liang is now sharing with students at Boston Conservatory through a new venture known as Lei Lab@Berklee.
Liang is a research artist and chancellor's distinguished professor of music at University of California San Diego, where he founded the original Lei Lab in 2023 with support from Berklee Trustee and Boston Conservatory Legacy Trustee Snow (Dan) Qin. Affiliated with the university's Qualcomm Institute, the laboratory explores the inevitable convergence of arts and science, combining Liang's compositional prowess with state-of-the-art research practices and a relentless curiosity about the natural world.
Lei Lab@Berklee will bring Liang to Boston Conservatory's campus as a visiting artist for five consecutive academic years. He will teach private lessons and seminars with composition students, coach contemporary classical music ensembles, and cocurate the school's annual New Music Festival. This new partnership (once again supported by Qin) also will result in two newly commissioned compositions.
During his spring 2024 residency, Liang worked with students of Associate Professor Sarah Brady (a longtime friend and frequent collaborator), workshopping two of his compositions and coaching students through improvisation exercises based on the same Arctic Ocean sounds that inspired Six Seasons. At the heart of contemporary music is collaboration with living composers, Brady says. The students really felt the essence of what a collaboration can be with Lei, who treated them as creative equals and with such beautiful respect.
Liang is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Rome Prize winner, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music, and a recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, which was performed at Carnegie Hall in 2023 by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with Brady as principal flutist.
During your visit to campus, you coached Sarah Brady's contemporary ensemble on two of your compositions. Could you tell me more about them?
One is an earlier piece that is very meaningful to me, called Lake, which is inspired by a meditation retreat that I participated in. It's a very soulful piece that helped me to understand my relationship with sound and silence. It's like a little mirror; I need to revisit this piece from time to time, almost like to face myself again. The idea came when I was walking around a lake in early spring. There was a V shape on the lake, and I didn't realize what it was until I saw a beaver swimming in the water. What was so moving for me was that I understood that the lake itself is silence. When the beaver swims on it, leaving a mark-that's a sonic signature. As a composer and a performer, that's how you inscribe your sonic signature: on silence.
As a composer and a performer, that's how you inscribe your sonic signature: on silence.
-Lei Liang
The other piece is one of my newest works, called Six Seasons. The piece came out of my collaboration with oceanographers at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I have worked with geologists, oceanographers, engineers, and software developers to create new ways to listen and to make music in the larger context of issues that are challenging all of us across the globe. Six Seasons comes from the Inuit's way of thinking of the calendar. There are six seasons, marked by the sounds of the changing environment-such as the footsteps of the polar bear signifying the beginning of a new season.
You were inspired by the primary importance of listening as opposed to the usual, astronomical way of marking the seasons?
Exactly. Listening is actually a very important part of the awareness that makes us understand the passing of time in nature. And, the sounds that I'm bringing with me during my visit [to Boston Conservatory] are the work of my team in collaboration with the oceanographers, which includes recordings captured by hydrophones placed 300 meters below the sea surface in the Arctic, at places completely inaccessible to humans until now. That includes a lot of ice sounds-all different kinds of ice formations and movements-and the birth of ice. We have sounds that capture the ice being born, when the open water starts to freeze in October.
That must be amazing. What does it sound like?
Oh, it's the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. It's incredible, and what's important is that because of the collaborative nature of our work, we are not only interested in the sounds for sounds' sake; we are actually inspired by the information that comes with the sound, through the eyes of oceanographers.
When you're using field recordings to inspire musical composition, do you attempt to mimic specific sounds on the instruments-perhaps using extended technique? Or is the inspiration more thematic?
All of the above. Artists-probably just by intuition-they want to mimic, but there's a lot more important information embedded in this. The traditional con
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
01/12/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
01/12/2025
Artemis II is NASA's first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The crew, from left: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Vic...
01/12/2025
IRVINE, Calif. Wooden Camera has introduced its new Accessory Collection for the Canon EOS C50. The new lineup includes a low-profile, gimbal-ready cage, expand...
01/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for its Dec. 18 Open Commission Meeting that will include a vote on a report an...
01/12/2025
In most years, a graph of annual local TV ad spending is about as predictable as an electrocardiogram of a reasonably healthy patient in a doctor's office. ...
01/12/2025
Many industries have seen big-ticket hardware turn into software. Switchers, though, demand a combination of real-time performance and sheer bandwidth that has ...
01/12/2025
GENEVA Shanghai will host the next quadrennial Radiocommunication Assembly (RA-27) and World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-27), Oct. 11-Nov. 12, 2027. This...
01/12/2025
NEW YORK Just in time for Giving Tuesday tomorrow (Dec. 2), the Broadcasters Foundation of America is seeking out donations to help television and radio industr...
01/12/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Net Insight CEO Crister Fritzson has informed the company's board that he will retire from the video transport and media cloud technology ...
01/12/2025
01 Dec 2025
Kyivstar and Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation Select Go...
01/12/2025
The prequel to the global hit Sky Original mob crime saga, Gomorrah' is a s...
01/12/2025
Featuring Florence Welch, Red Hot Chilli Peppers' Flea, designer Bella Freud...
01/12/2025
Back to All News
A Down to Earth, All Too Relatable Hero: Cashero' Teaser ...
01/12/2025
In the rush to deliver content to every screen, many broadcasters overlook one of the most crucial steps in the workflow: format and frame rate conversion. Get ...
01/12/2025
Fox Corporation Chief Financial Officer Steve Tomsic to Participate in Upcoming ...
01/12/2025
Arvato Systems' Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Receives BSI C5 Certification (T...
01/12/2025
Summary This short video gives you an summary of the changes in under two minutes.
--...
01/12/2025
As the festive season approaches, RT Supporting the Arts is proud to showcase a...
01/12/2025
Researchers worldwide rely on open-source technologies as the foundation of their work. To equip the community with the latest advancements in digital and physi...
01/12/2025
Festive specials of Christmas in Kilmainham presented by Marty Whelan, High Road Low Road, Callan Kicks the Year and Keys to My Life
Ring in the New Year with ...
01/12/2025
Architect and television presenter Hugh Wallace, best known to RT audiences as a long-serving judge on Home of the Year, has died at the age of 68.
In a state...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
Q&A with Visiting Artist Lei Liang The acclaimed composer discusses his collaboration with Boston Conservatory, his work as a research artist, and what it means to listen creatively.
