Engineering music

Huang says he always wanted some Chinese elements in his children's music lessons, but there was nothing he could find in Seattle at the time.

After a decade of seeing his children exposed to pure Western music, he made up his mind in 2005 to learn composition and teach his children about China's musical traditions.

That's when he met his mentor, Briggs, who is a former student of Samule Adler, the renowned modern composer and music professor at New York's Juilliard School.

"Austin did begin his composition lessons late in life, but his engineering is not irrelevant," Briggs says.

"An engineer is one who designs and builds. Composers design and build sonic structures, and Austin immediately saw the correlation. Each new concept I introduced to Austin he approached as an 'engineer-artist'. When I pointed out to him that composers are architects of sound, he immediately understood."

While Huang's engineering background helped him with logical thinking, his multicultural experiences helped him blend Chinese and Western music together.

"My music might be hard to classify as either Chinese or Western," he says.

Huang says that most American audiences can only think of Chen Gang's Butterfly Lovers violin concerto when they talk about Chinese music. So he wants to make some changes.

Last year, when the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra asked for his help to organize a concert in Seattle, Huang had only one condition - the entire performance must be Chinese music.

"If Chinese orchestras are not playing Chinese music when they are abroad, then Westerners will think we do not have our own music."

Huang made his name in 2013 while holding the concert, titled A Colorful Musical Journey, in Seattle. His music represented China at the city's annual Asian music gala.

Huang sees this as the turning point of his composing career. He also finds that the younger his audiences are, the more they are likely to enjoy his music.

"If you don't let children see the really good things, how can you expect them to believe that China does have good music?" he says.

Contact the writer at chenmengwei@chinadaily.com.cn