Sofia Jen Ouyang (b. 2001, USA) is interested in the intersection and collision of varying artistic expression, fusing musical, literary, and philosophical concepts into her works. Sofia is currently pursuing her undergraduate degrees in Music and Philosophy at Columbia University, and studies with Andrew Norman at The Juilliard School. She is also a mentee of David Serkin Ludwig and Claire Chase. Sofia is a 2021 Blueprint fellow with National Sawdust, a winner of the 2022 Gena Raps Piano Chamber Music Prize, and has received honors from The American Prize (2022), BMI Student Composer Award (2021), and Society of Composers Inc. Sofia’s works have been performed by the JACK Quartet, violinist Juliette Kang, National Sawdust Ensemble, clarinetist Stanislav Chernyshev, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, pianist Cornelia Herrmann, percussionist Sae Hashimoto, and flutist Isabel Gleicher. Upcoming projects include a 16-voice choral commission for the New York Virtuoso Singers and a mini-Opera with the Columbia New Opera Workshop.

About the piece

the swarming collective creating, making, illuminating interlocking and successive sounds that are not immediately pleasant nor unpleasant, at times elegant and at times coarse.

sounds of a haze, blurring into its surroundings, sounds of clarity, of a repetitive, mechanical tingling, of –

enchanted was I, a three-year-old little human being looking into the flowers and trees and grasses and mountains and lakesides of Dali, my childhood. a dedication of countless afternoons by the garden’s baby’s breath observing the buzzing of honeybees, by the lake bordering our village looking for the blue green orange red dragonflies, by the tea tree fields

discovering preying mantis and crickets hiding beneath……

they are the intricate coinhabitants of our planet, that which simultaneously fascinates and alienates –

insects