The American String Quartet and Vivian Fung - Collaborations
Music Editor, Gene Raps, interviews founding member of the American String Quartet, Laurie Carney. For a portion of the interview, Carney mentions Fung:
GR: Recently I was at a concert at Manhattan School of Music where you played several 21st-century pieces. Has the ASQ commissioned new music?
LC: At that concert we played a piece by Vivian Fung, whom we met 21 years ago when Richard Danielpour organized a composers’ seminar in Florida. We had recorded three of his quartets and he invited us to join the seminar since he knew our work. There were probably 10, 12 composers. We read their music and made suggestions. Vivian had just written an impressive movement of a quartet. It was meant to be the scherzo of a quartet, and was an all-pizzicato movement. Up to that point there were only one or two all-pizzicato movements. We invited her to finish writing the quartet. In 2005 or so we played the Great Wall Festival in China and called Vivian to let her know we were going to play her quartet in China and to invite her to speak about the music. Vivian said “I’d love to, I’d be honored.”
More recently I ran into Vivian in Chinatown, “What are you doing down here?” I asked. She said, “I’m learning Chinese,” which she didn’t know. She grew up in Canada and her parents wanted to assimilate as quickly as possible. When we were asked about whom we would like to write a new commission, we chose Vivian again. She wrote a fascinating piece for us without melody or harmony. All of the sound waves morph from just one series of sounds. It’s called Insects and Machines and was inspired by a trip to Cambodia. I found it fascinating.