Be a part of this project!

“For this project, I am looking specifically for members of the Chinese American community who were born in the United States. You do not have to be in New York City, as the interview process will be completed entirely remotely, and each interview will last approximately 10 to 20 minutes. As a thank-you for your contribution, I will credit your participation in the Family Association app and the project’s website, and will also send you an edited copy of your recorded interview for your own use.” – George Tsz-Kwan Lam

Family Association
George Tsz-Kwan Lam

Building on my recent work (The Emigrants) with oral history and musical placemaking, Family Association is a new site-specific, geolocation-enabled piece that uses collected oral history recordings from the Chinese American community as part an interactive soundwalk in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood, one of the oldest communities of Chinese Americans in the U.S. The recorded testimony will focus on the interviewees’ memories of their extended families, how their families emigrated to the U.S., as well as whom they imagine their ancestors to be — including those who left their homes to seek a new future in the United States decades (and perhaps centuries) ago. Using GPS technology, the audio interviews will be embedded with the sites of various “family associations” in Chinatown; such associations have created tight-knit, supportive, social, and imagined communities based on a common family name, and their locations within the neighborhood serve as a way for the listener to interact with the piece.

In Family Association, the listener will use a GPS-enabled smartphone app as they freely explore Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood. As the work begins, the speech is more fragmented, interspersed with musical gestures inspired by the rhythms and melodic contours of the recorded speech. When the listener approaches the site of a family association, the speech becomes more whole, recalling the way in which these micro-communities have helped generations of Chinese Americans to both reconstruct and reconnect with their past. Over the course of the 15-minute experience, the recorded testimony gradually focuses on the interviewees’ vision of their legacy for the next generation.

Family Association is co-presented by The Performance Project at University Settlement and MATA, and is supported in part by a Faculty Impact Fund grant from the Faculty of Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University.

George’s Artist Statement

As a Hong Kong-born composer who moved to the U.S. at a young age, and who recently moved back to Hong Kong to teach and write music, I am particularly interested in how the places where we live can have profound influences not only on our day-to-day lives, but also in how we connect with the communities who share these spaces with us. I explore this in a series of projects that I call “musical placemaking,” which is the creation of music that connects the audience with the specific place in which it is performed and heard. Such projects include a site-specific opera in 2011 inspired by former cigarette factories in Durham, North Carolina, as well as a concert band work in 2017 based on scenes from the town of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, performed by students who live in the town. My latest musical placemaking project, titled The Emigrants, included collected oral history recordings from various emigrant musicians living or working in Queens, New York City, one of the most ethnically diverse urban areas in the world. In these interviews, I focus on how the experience of leaving home has shaped the musicians’ identities and why they have chosen to stay. The recorded speech is interwoven with instrumental music, blurring the lines between recorded reality and its musical representation. In contrast to the way in which documentary film prioritizes a visual record of their subjects, therefore, musical placemaking projects not only create space for a new aural and musical documentary form, but they also create an opportunity for listeners to experience seemingly everyday sights and sounds through different perspectives.

Artist Bios

George Tsz-Kwan Lam is a composer and educator based in Hong Kong and New York City, and is currently associate professor at the Department of Music, Hong Kong Baptist University. Previously, he served as assistant professor of music at York College, The City University of New York; as a co-artistic director for the NYC-based new opera ensemble Rhymes With Opera; and as the 2018 composer-in-residence at the Chautauqua Opera Company, where he created three works for the company: Sissieretta Jones, Carnegie Hall, 1902 / O patria mia on a poem by Tyehimba Jess; Such Sweet Sorrow on a poem by Allison Joseph; and Underwater Acoustics on a poem by Rajiv Mohabir. George has previously worked with artists and ensembles including Jeff Docimo and the Isodoc Dance Company, White Snake Projects, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Hong Kong Voices, Synergy Percussion, the Gesher Music Festival, Romer String Quartet, and New Morse Code. For the 2021-22 season, he is serving as an Artist-In-Residence at The Performance Project at University Settlement in NYC. www.gtlam.com

This project is co-presented by The Performance Project at University Settlement, offering local young artists and professional emerging artists opportunities to connect, create and publicly present new work. We support artists who are interested in how live art can heal, empower and activate.

Michelle Tabnick, Publicist