Vocal Music

This work is a collection of one Sanskrit mantra and five Buddhist poems of Vietnam, all of which were written in Chinese because Vietnamese people had used Chinese as the written language of learning until our Latin-based modern national script was popularized in the twentieth century. I kept the original text of the Sanskrit mantra

https://youtu.be/y2fUg9aj0Vo?si=R5mdXpXZQf1DxKJI November 18, 2018: Senior Composition Recital, performed by musicians at North Park University: Olga Lebedeva (mezzo-soprano), Rebekah Harvey (flute), and Michael Ronnett (piano). A previous performance by the same musicians took place on November 13, 2017. While Mãn Giác (滿覺, 1052–96), a revered Vietnamese Zen master and Buddhist monk, was facing the imminent departure from

The lyrics of this song is the poem “Tống Biệt Hành” (Song of Separation), written by Thâm Tâm in 1940. The poem encapsulates the sentiments of many young Vietnamese people who were facing the oppressive grip of French colonial rule on their homeland. As the nation had enduring nearly a century of silent resignation and

My mother wrote the poem “My Soul Plant” when she started loving my father. So young and hopeful at that time, she still had a faint presage that her love for him would become the origin of much pain in the later years. Yet she loved him with all her heart and never regretted loving

She Came Back from the War is based on a Vietnamese poem, “Two Generations of Mothers,” written by my mother, Trầm Hương, in 1993. The original poem recounts the true story of a Vietnamese woman who lost her leg from the Vietnam–American War. Thus, she was unable to marry after the war had ended. Her