Artist Statement
I am a composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist. Sound and the body are central to my practice, and my work germinates from a kinesthetic and improvisatory approach. My compositions span acoustic and electronic music, and my interdisciplinary practice integrates sound, movement, and theater.
I experiment with the physicality of producing sound, through instruments and often untrained voices (such as my own) to instigate new techniques and sonic ideas. I also combine improvisation and through-composed scoring. I see electronics as a form of extended technique, particularly when creating live electronics for my solo piano music.
Through my work, I amplify my voice as a second generation Filipinx American, process trauma, and escape & create my own world. I vacillate between wanting to delve into ancestral history as part of the collective effort to remember or feeling that we/our stories been colonized/pillaged to the point where there’s nothing left to do but to create with the joy & sense of unconscious purpose I had as a child. I’m driven by both a sense of duty as a future ancestor & the naïveté of art for art’s sake.