Bun-Ching Lam: Conversations with My Soul Thomas Buckner

• Bun-Ching Lam (b. 1954): 5 Songs from Cold Mountain:
• 1Lam: 5 Songs from Cold Mountain: No. 1, Clouds and Waters04:02
• 2Lam: 5 Songs from Cold Mountain: No. 2, The Metaphor of Life and Death02:52
• 3Lam: 5 Songs from Cold Mountain: No. 3, When Happiness Comes By02:46
• 4Lam: 5 Songs from Cold Mountain: No. 4, Body or No Body03:42
• 5Lam: 5 Songs from Cold Mountain: No. 5, Cold Mountain02:52
• Last Love Songs:
• 6Lam: Last Love Songs: No. 1, When Passion's Trance Is Over-Past02:45
• 7Lam: Last Love Songs: No. 2, Remembrance04:32
• 8Lam: Last Love Songs: No. 3, Music, When Soft Voices Die02:48
• Bun-Ching Lam:
• 9Lam: Age d'Or06:39
• 3 Cadeaux (Excerpts):
• 10Lam: 3 Cadeaux (Excerpts): No. 1, Ein alter Tibetteppich03:44
• 11Lam: 3 Cadeaux (Excerpts): No. 3, Lotosträume05:21
• Bun-Ching Lam:
• 12Lam: Conversations with My Soul (Live)20:42
• Total Runtime01:02:45

Info for Bun-Ching Lam: Conversations with My Soul

Newly released from Navona is CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SOUL, a collection of new chamber works from acclaimed composer-pianist Bun-Ching Lam. The music sets in different languages the poetry of Shelley, Heine, Rimbaud, and Lasker-Shüller, as well as the poems of 9th Century Chinese mystic Han Shan and contemporary writer Etel Adnan. In a compositional voice The New York Times has called “alluringly exotic,” Lam incorporates baritone voice, piano, viola, flute, French horn, and harp to elucidate timeless works concerning life’s fundamental questions. With a thoroughly contemporary sensibility informed by tradition, Lam’s CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SOUL offers listeners a fitting soundtrack for their own existential ponderings.

Thomas Buckner, baritone
Bun-Ching Lam, piano

Thomas Buckner
For decades, baritone THOMAS BUCKNER has dedicated himself to the performance and promotion of new and improvised music, collaborating with a host of new music luminaries including Robert Ashley, Noah Creshevsky, Tom Hamilton, Earl Howard, Matthias Kaul, Leroy Jenkins, Bun-Ching Lam, Annea Lockwood, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill, Chinary Ung, Christian Wolff, and many others. Buckner has appeared at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Berlin Spring Festival, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Prague Spring Festival, and the Angelica Festival of Bologna, among others. He is featured on over 50 recordings, including six solo albums. For the past 31 years, Buckner has curated and produced the Interpretations New Music Series in New York City, seeking to support the relationship between composers and the growing community of virtuoso new music interpreters.

Bun-Ching Lam
Described as “alluringly exotic” (The New York Times), and “hauntingly attractive” (San Francisco Chronicle), the music of Bun-Ching Lam has been performed worldwide by such ensembles as the Macao Orchestra, American Composer’s Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, The Vienna Radio Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and the Albany Symphony. Born in Macao, Lam served as the composer-in-residence of the Macao Orchestra from 2008-2016. She began her piano study in her native city, then further pursued her music education in Hong Kong and the United States. She holds a B.A. in Piano Performance from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of California at San Diego. She has taught at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and served as Visiting Professor at the Yale University School of Music and at Bennington College. She has been recognized with numerous awards including a Rome Prize, the highest award at the Shanghai International Composers’ Competition, two NEA grants, fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has received commissions from the American Composers Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Macao Orchestra, Chamber Music America, CrossSound Festival, Bang On a Can Festival, Sequitur, Continuum, Ursula Oppens, and the Arditti String Quartet. She also served as the Music Alive! Composer-in-Residence with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Lam’s work has been recorded on Mutable Music, CRI, Tzadik, Nimbus, and Koch International. She now divides her time between Paris and New York.

This album contains no booklet.