Composer Yu-Hui Chang's Mind Like Water presents three ensemble works and one solo cello piece that all feature a dialogue between musical elements. Sometimes this dialogue unfolds between contrasting energies, such as the percolating rhythms of the opening movement of In Thin Air versus the dramatic gestures in its second movement. Other times the conversation is between smaller musical elements, like the cells in Germinate or the flowing, through composed unfolding of the title work. The recording features performances by the Lydian String Quartet, Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, Composers Conference Ensemble, and cellist Rhonda Rider.

Yu-Hui Chang allows the process of composition, in all of its uncertainties and ambiguities, into her works. The result is music that reflects the actual flow of her inspiration as much as a preconceived conception. The four works on Mind Like Water share this natural quality; despite highlighting complex compositional concepts and instrumental techniques, each piece develops in a disarmingly organic fashion, with seamless transitions and arching overall shapes.

In Thin Air opens with nervous driving motion, as plates played with thin wire establish a pulse grid that becomes interconnected with the violin and piano, interjecting pizzicati, accented chords, swells, and truncated figures. All the sounds are charged and catalyzed, expressions of stored up energy seeping out in controlled bursts. When the rhythms are expressed in unison, the passages take on the quality of speech, utterances with abstract meaning. The playful intensity of the first movement gives way to rhapsody in movement two, as pathos laden lines in the violin are supported by rich voicings and brilliant arpeggios in the piano and ominous rolls on non-pitched percussion. The final movement is anchored by an oscillating ostinato in the violin, as the piano plays glistening chordal phrases over evocative cymbal rolls. After the repeated figures become distributed throughout the ensemble and refracted, prism-like, we hear echoes of the expressive melancholy of the second movement returning as the work fades out into a whisper.

Germinate takes advantage of the diverse timbres available in its instrumentation of flute/piccolo, cello, violin, piano, clarinet, and percussion. As per the work’s title, small seeds of musical information are the genesis for expansion, evolving in dialogue with the material in other instruments. Initially, we hear short articulations that percolate around the “stereo field” of the ensemble; the durations and lengths of fragments steadily increase as central pitches are reasserted throughout the group. The disjunct rhythms coalesce into a fluid composite dance that smooths over the jagged corners of its component parts. As individual lines lengthen, the delicate cohesion of the ensemble begins to erode, and the work finds itself surveying the detritus of its own post-exuberance. From that stasis emerges a forceful section that careens towards a climactic reasserted unison pitch, before the music disintegrates once again into small cells.

The process of composing the title work, performed here by the Lydian String Quartet, was shaped by stream of consciousness style literary techniques as well as Buddhist concepts of meditation. Yu-Hui Chang’s goal was to release control over the musical materials that emerged in the process of composition, instead allowing them to be “fluid and free, ready to embrace all changes and possibilities.” Perhaps consequently, the piece is less pulse driven than the active music in Germinate and the outer movements of In Thin Air, instead establishing a sonic space in which gestures have their own temporal envelope to grow and recede, and lead into other ideas organically. Resonance seems to be a guiding presence in Mind Like Water, as luminous gestures and glittering voicings linger in the quartet throughout the first half of the piece. During a climactic section, the music becomes more vigorous and emphatic, with accented unison passages, punctuated pizzicati, taut swells, and interlocking figures.

The solo cello work Alter Ego is the most inward facing work in the collection, though Yu-Hui Chang nevertheless manages to explore dialogue, between the performer and their instrument. The three movements of the work explore different sides to that relationship and the ongoing challenge of finding balance within it. The opening movement, “affectionate,” projects a tinkering quality, as repeated fragments are subjected to permutation and mined for expressive content, not unlike the joyful repetition one finds in practicing one’s instrument. “expressive, yet somewhat distant” is lyrical and poignant, with longer elegiac lines that culminate in a mournful passage over a drone. “methodical” opens with dry, pointed accents and laser-like figures popping out from the texture as the cellist functions as both the soloist and their own rhythm section. Bracing, off-kilter phrases are repeated and varied with additive material, constructing a measured, mathematical argument in sound.


Whether Yu-Hui Chang is writing for a medium sized ensemble of diverse instruments, smaller forces, or a solo instrument, her work is always engaged in a dialogue. It is this quality that keeps the music breathing and dynamic, as ideas grow as in a conversation, not necessarily in predictable ways, but always in a through line of expressive meaning. In Thin Air plays out as a fervent conversation between three voices, Germinate an arc of development within a small ecosystem, Mind Like Water as a free flowing expression of internal dialogue, and Alter Ego as a negotiation between symbiotic partners. Throughout, Yu-Hui Chang’s music is finely tuned to the connective tissue between musical moments, integrating myriad elements into naturally unfolding textures instead of manufacturing textures out of pet concepts.

- Dan Lippel