Walter H. Rubsamen Music Library

I composed The Boat and the Sea as a celebration of my first love. This piece is inspired by a poem by Xuân Quỳnh (1942–88), one of the most well-known female poets in Vietnam since the twentieth century. Her poem, “Thuyền và Biển” [The Boat and the Sea], is a love letter that describes a woman’s heart through several stages of love. At first, she is a mysterious sea, so enticing yet far away. Then, as her heart grows fonder, she is like gentle ripples, but some other times, she becomes vehement waves that push the boat for no reason. And if she is ever separated from her love, all that remains in her are tumultuous storms.

In the performers' score, I quote lines from the poem at the beginning of each musical section to suggest the desired characteristics of the music.* Several extended techniques for the alto saxophone and percussion imitate sounds from the ocean, such as winds, storms, moving sand, the seagulls' chirping, and whales' vocalization. For the electronic percussion, I use the recordings from A Collection of Sounds from the Sea on the website of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)** as the sound samples.

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library with Bent Frequency and Jan Berry Baker.