JAVS Spring 2013

Example 6. George Tsz-Kwan Lam, The Love Song for Mary Flagler Cary , mm. 79–82.

expatriates who have experienced life beyond our borders. Lam describes it best when he notes:

Anticipated to be a three-movement work, the first movement of The Emigrants will start out as a prel ude, with all three instruments toying with overlap ping glissandi, growing increasingly discordant and fractured. Lam begins the second movement with the exclamation of one of the interview subjects: “What did I miss?” He expounds on the memories and nostalgia of those who have been interviewed. Lam notes that “the third movement will focus on the moment that the interviewees were leaving home to go abroad and how it felt.” 24 using overlapping and almost-inaudible rumblings in the background, Lam plans to play back the interviews in a variety of ways, even through the instrumentalists’ own speak ing voices. The Emigrants , Lam notes, should be completed by December 2012, with an anticipated premiere in mid-2013.

For me, the piece is more about trying to expand my work on the documentary, following The Persistence of Smoke , and seeing how this can be translated in a chamber music context. I pitched this documentary idea to the trio, where we would go out and interview first, and then I’ll come back and figure out how to incorporate the interviews into the piece. The trio liked this and suggested the theme of “expats,” since all three of them have spent a considerable amount of time studying and working abroad. I’m an expat myself [who has] been fully assimilated into an American identity, and I was interested in figuring out just what kind of music would go with today’s immigrant experi ence. We’re still in the process of collecting inter views, and I’m especially interested in talking with people who are not able to return home. 23

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