Living in The In-Between

A collaboration between Vivian Fung, librettist Royce Vavrek, and soprano Andrea Núñez.

Living In the “In-Between” is an evening of song highlighting the Asian-American experience as seen through the eyes of two Chinese-American women artists: composer Vivian Fung and soprano Andrea Núñez. The song cycle was conceived in response to the pandemic of anti-Asian racism and violence that has accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic. The libretto by Royce Vavrek will be based on oral histories by Núñez and Fung. The entire work is a response to the work of such artists as Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo but will be markedly different - it will be an experimental version of ballades that highlight a multiracial experience, including Andrea’s mixed heritage of Chinese and Hispanic cultures.

The song cycle tells the story of Núñez coming to terms with her Chinese-Hispanic-American upbringing through a myriad of experiences including a break up with a partner, her mother’s detection of cancer, and her multicultural relationships with food. Fung envisions the project have multi-layers - using English, Spanish, and Chinese in the texts, as well as using different combinations of electronic and acoustic sounds to provide Andrea a multi-dimensional support for her voice. The songs will be woven together with sonic and video interludes of Andrea’s life to augment and provide depth to the narrative.

This project is a way to instigate dialogue and awareness about navigating the invisibility of Asians in our culture at-large and how this is perpetuated when working within white cultural forms and systems. Because NYC has been one of the epicenters of the current wave of anti-Asian racism, National Sawdust (NS) believes it is vital to support artists playing a prominent role in dismantling these harmful cultural norms. The artists and NS will actively engage our community with works-in-progress showings and meet-the-artists talks, where we will dig into these important issues.  The dialogue coming from these forums will inform and shape the final outcome of the composition as well as the format in which it will be presented.  

We hope to turn this project into a full length album for commercial release as well as seek partners for an international tour.

Total excerpt duration below: 10 minutes

Total duration of entire proposed project: Evening length/length of a CD