Lei Liang: Six Seasons: Instrumentation Lab

Six Seasons: Solos

Composer Lei Liang never stops exploring and expanding the possibilities of music and sound – including instruments.

Yet how new, or original, is the music on the new two-CD set Six Seasons: Instrumentation Lab? It’s a tricky question.

In my experience, the lengthier and more obscure the liner notes, the emptier the music. What to make of writing like “Liang has fashioned a syntax of symbiosis in flux…his compositions eschew teleology in favor of distillation and reconfiguration…Liang composes convergence in reiteration. Never content with what is as is, he listens and re-evaluates.” Yes, it’s possible to parse meaning from such hyper-Latinate writing. But then, to try to map that meaning to what you’re hearing – can it be done? is it worth the effort?

Recently, urban rats chewed up chunks of my car engine, sending the vehicle to the shop for a completely new engine harness. It was the second time I’d had a vehicle thus attacked on the streets of Manhattan. I thought of this as I listened to the piano movement of “Season 1: Darkness,” the first main section of “Six Seasons: Solos” from the double album. This, I thought, is just what it might have sounded like under the hood as the rodents ate away at my soy-based insulation and chewed through my wiring.

There are sounds in the music that clearly come from a piano, derived directly from the strings or through sympathetic vibration if not via the keyboard. But most of the piece is toneless.

And when the next part begins and the source shifts to the harp – which, admittedly, resembles the skeleton of a piano – it’s hard at first to notice a transition. Strings, wood, pedals – check. Contact mics? Ultimately there is more tonality in the harp movement. The instrument’s nature makes itself known. We also hear what sound like muted vocals. Still, it’s only marginally more “musical.”

Not surprisingly, sounds derived from the passage of air rather than the vibration of strings distinguish the bassoon movement.Ben Roidl-Ward) produces squeaks and whispers and dual tones. But there’s little to grasp onto in these five minutes. Where did that time go?

“Season 3: Sunrise” starts like pouring rain, ironically suggesting a morning on which the sunrise isn’t visible at all. The rest of the short, anxious track consists of hissing, piping, and scraping sounds.

An acoustic-electronic language of sorts seems to be trying to emerge from Andrew Kozar’s trumpet in “Season 4: Migration.” Eerie, descending electronic dives and chirpings pile on top of one another, some suggestive of analog synthesizer sounds, together with warbling from a (presumably muted) trumpet. It adds up to something that could be part of a sci-fi soundtrack.

Baritone Ty Bouque produces an extended guttural croak in “Season 1: New Ice.” He returns for the first part of “Season 5: Cacophony.” But in the latter piece, for a while there isn’t much that resembles the normal workings of a human voice. Halfway through, toneless sighing and groaning arrive to intermingle with the electronics.

The Body Electric

It’s useful to reflect on the similarity between the human body as a sound source and the musical instruments we build. Vocal cords that vibrate, air that passes through various chambers, percussively resonant hands and thighs – in a sense, creating instruments is just enhancing ourselves.

Thus, there’s not a big gulf between Bouque’s moans and the keenings of William Lang’s trombone in the next section, or some of the prattling of Adrián Sandí’s bass clarinet in the one after that. When Lang blows toneless air through the trombone’s brass tubing, how different is that from the sounds that human lungs can engender on their own? Sandí’s squeals aren’t so different from what a human being choking on grief (or just choking) might sound like.

Tyler J. Borden’s moans on the cello could almost be a distorted human voice, and there are animal noises (from elephants and gorillas, for example) that resemble some of the accompanying higher-pitched whines.

Jesse Langen delivers the more metallic “Season 6: Bloom” on the electric guitar, the only difference here being that there’s less audible parallel with the human somatic instrument. Pianist Stephen Drury’s single notes and monkey-like screams from the “Prelude” return for a brief final “Postlude.”

Having finished two listens, I lean back in my armchair and reflect: I don’t know, man – I feel like people were doing this same sort of stuff back in the 1950s, if not before.

Six Seasons: Ensemble

The cycle on the second disc, divided into six pieces with the same titles as the first, plus a coda, holds more interest, mostly because the larger ensemble varies the sound palette. The group nec[shivaree], the New England Conservatory’s avant-garde ensemble, here includes French horn, viola, cello, contrabass, electric guitar, and two pianists. Once again the music dispenses with rhythm and, for large stretches, with tone. Once again extended techniques dominate.

And once again the quieter parts, as in “Darkness,” sound like small animals snuffling around trying to ferret something out.

But the grumbles of “Sunrise” are shot through with piercing harmonics. A viola melody tries to snake to the surface. The bass tries hesitantly to provide a floor, even a hint at an ostinato. Percussive sounds emanate from non-percussion instruments. Woodwind sounds percolate from an ensemble with no woodwinds. Waves of static sound like water. Periods of activity persist.

There’s a brittle coldness to “Ice.” Birdlike sounds flutter across “Migration,” along with actual harmonies. “Cacophony” sounds like a small orchestra setting up in a disorganized recording studio underwater; as on the first disc, it’s no more “cacophonous” than any other movement and less raucous than some. Toward the end it even seems to grope towards establishing a key.

“Bloom” has quite a bit of life – use your imagination and you might discern birds, monkeys, a lion, an elephant. You might even focus undefined noises into sound-pictures of flowers in bloom.

Wordy Rappinghood

Here’s what I take from Marc Medwin’s interminable (and annotated!) liner notes: Liang creates and realizes music using, and inspired by, nature, electronics, and technology as well as instruments; reimagines what an “instrument” actually is; and blurs the line between improvisation and composition. That’s digestible.

Whether, as Medwin writes, the present cycle “brims with possibility, with the permeability of discovery in rediscovery, as the brilliantly malleable form reshapes, redefines and reimagines its structures and boundaries” – well, that’s something the listener is welcome to grapple with. This listener doesn’t have the time or the brainspace. To put it another way: Huh?

Lei Liang has been prominent for years in the fields of new and Indigenous music, both as a composer and a musicologist. He has won many awards and received prestigious commissions. What he composes, and what he has to say about it, is always worth a listen and a look. My impression of the music on this album is that it raises the process of creation to such an esoteric level that its substance thins out almost to the vanishing point. My other birds-eye-view thought is: Is he really doing anything new here?

— Jon Sobel, 5.04.2026

And speaking of intermingled sounds, they are very much the point of a very extended work called Six Seasons by Lei Liang (born 1972). New Focus Recordings offers the two-hour piece on two CDs, the first (Solos) lasting an hour and a quarter, the second (Ensemble) taking up the remaining time. Rather than being continuous, Six Seasons consists of a series of short works, ranging in length from less than one minute to more than 10. Most are not music in a traditional sense – the opening Prelude, for example, starts with the call of a beluga whale, followed by electronic-keyboard chords. The following items include a baritone solo featuring indrawn breath that sounds like an extended scream of pain, a trumpet-and-trombone item that sounds like percussion, and then pieces for piano, harp, bassoon, ensemble, trumpet, voice, trombone, bass clarinet, piano, cello, and electric guitar. The point made again and again is that he instruments do not sound like what listeners will expect them to sound like: Liang explores soundscapes that insist on being something beyond the “merely” aural, reaching out to – well, what they reach out to is far from clear. The sounds emanating from all the instruments are altered, filtered, overlaid, switched, expanded or contracted, and generally transformed into something recognizable as sound but not in terms of its point(s) or instrument(s) of origin. Liang’s idea involves taking ocean sounds (recorded off the coast of Alaska) and mingling them with highly modified instrumental sounds and extended performance techniques in order to produce a sense of immersion – presumably within the ocean, although this is never made explicitly clear, with some sections sounding more as if they are transporting listeners to the innards of a toilet bowl or the workings of a thunderstorm’s clouds. Both animal calls and instrumental sounds are occasionally intelligible, but their clarity comes within a sonic environment designed to distort perception and undermine the reasons for being of animals, instruments, and performers. The first part of Six Seasons ends with two pieces labeled Postlude, one sounding like gentle rain interrupted by a crash and the other like a small shriek with tiny bits of piano sprinkled on it. Liang’s determination to be perceived as extremely avant-garde is everywhere apparent, and the notion that only the cognoscenti can possibly appreciate the depth and richness of his tone-and-noise painting pervades the project. The second, “ensemble” part of Six Seasons is entirely for grouped instruments and consists, unsurprisingly, of six elements – which share their titles with six of the parts of the “solo” material. However, it is not always apparent that there are multiple instruments involved in these items, since the alterations worked in the “solo” material are also used in the “ensemble” elements, and the intentionally extensive electronic manipulation does an excellent job of concealing the source of whatever is being modified. The primary difference in the “ensemble” segments is length: they are much longer than the individual pieces in the “solo” realm. But they produce exactly the same impressions by using exactly the same methods of distortion, overlay, extension, textural modification, and so forth. Two hours of this is a lot of it, and if Liang was looking to reach an extremely rarefied audience and take listeners on a long, long journey to realms whose connection with any traditional notion of music is obscure at best, he has certainly succeeded. Six Seasons demonstrates, if any such demonstration is still necessary in the 21st century, that contemporary composers are quite as capable as slightly less-recent ones of producing material that will be extremely off-putting to the vast majority of potential listeners while making a tiny subgroup of fans feel as if its members are part of an inner circle of auditory superiority.

— Mark Estren, 5.07.2026

Su queste pagine, della musica del compositore Lei Liang, ve ne ho parlato sempre con grande partecipazione. Da parte mia non manca mai un grande slancio nel verificare i percorsi di Lei, non solo perché conosco bene la sua storia e le sue vicende professionali ma soprattutto per la sincronia con quanto cerchiamo nella musica, una che approfondisce sulla scienza, l’arte e l’impegno civile: Liang ha affrontato con determinazione la materia etnomusicologica, pensando alle tradizioni musicali asiatiche che stanno scomparendo e all’integrazione dei caratteri culturali cinesi nei contesti d’avanguardia occidentali; ha creato al Qualcomm Institute dell’Università di S. Diego un’equipe multidisciplinare di scienziati, ingegneri e storici dell’arte per offrire una spettacolare sonificazione di un dipinto di Huang Binhong (la scansione multispettrale ad alta risoluzione di Hearing Landscape); ha denunciato le gravi problematiche della giustizia sociale negli Stati Uniti, in particolare l’uso troppo facilitato delle armi attraverso la riflessione su Winchester in Inheritance e lo sfruttamento dei migranti ai confini con il Messico in Cuatro Corridos; negli ultimi tempi, poi, è il cambiamento climatico che lo ha tenuto sulle spine e Lei ha utilizzato lussuosi field recordings catturati da idrofoni nell’Oceano Artico, traducendo il drammatico processo di formazione e rottura del ghiaccio stagionale (ciò che è avvenuto con la musica di Hearing Icescapes e Six Seasons).

Su quest’ultimo argomento Liang non ha ancora finito di analizzare e trovare ulteriori contesti per creare connubi tra creatività e comprensione profonda del problema climatico. Ad Aprile è stato pubblicato dalla Focus Recordings un doppio CD che espande sui concetti di Hearing Icescapes e Six Seasons, anche con un’evoluzione in termini di organico. Per notare le differenze è necessario fare un confronto in termini temporali tenendo conto che Liang e il suo fidato oceanografo Joshua Jones sono 8 anni che stanno svolgendo la ricerca sonora negli ambienti marini e che questa ricerca si va sempre più perfezionando; vale la pena sottolineare come mentre Hearing Icescapes documentava il mondo sonoro sottomarino impegnando l’operato di tre musicisti (flauto, violino e tromba) in una fase iniziale del progetto, già Six Seasons si trovava in condizione di gestire più aspetti, una pluralità di manovra che è stata oggetto di 2 pubblicazioni discografiche, due esperimenti in cui in uno si valutava la performance di un quartetto d’archi con elettronica (il Mivos Quartet), mentre nell’altro si accoglieva il lavoro sensitivo di Marco Fusi a violino e viola d’amore.

Pur condividendo lo stesso materiale scientifico di partenza di Hearing Icescapes e Six Season, Six Seasons Instrumentation Lab, il nuovo doppio CD per Focus R., presenta ulteriori differenziazioni e approfondimenti in termini di strumenti utilizzati, di musicisti invitati a suonare, di ausili per l’elaborazione elettronica. È un doppio CD in cui Liang ha voluto creare un duplice binario dell’interpretazione, coinvolgendo in un primo CD una serie di musicisti che si presentano in veste solista, mentre un secondo CD è appannaggio di un ensemble di 8 elementi. I partecipanti sono il pianista Stephen Drury (suo amico e frequente collaboratore), il chitarrista Jesse Langen, l’arpista Ben Melsky, il fagottista Ben Roidl-Ward, il violoncellista Tyler J. Borden e il quartetto atipico del loadbang (Ty Bouque, Andrew Kozar, William Lang, Adrian Sandì, rispettivamente solisti alla voce baritono, tromba, trombone e clarinetto basso; mentre per l’intero secondo CD è l’ensemble nec[shivaree], che performa, un ensemble diretto da Drury e formato da corno francese, viola, violoncello, contrabbasso, 2 chitarre elettriche e 2 pianoforti. In entrambi i CD Lei si occupa dell’elaborazione del suono.

Come già sperimentato in precedenza, anche in Six Seasons Instrumentation Lab i musicisti non hanno partitura convenzionale, la loro partitura è quella ‘vivente’ (la living score) che deriva dall’ascolto dell’audio delle registrazioni dei suoni dell’ecosistema artico opportunamente processate da Liang e Deluga. Lei dà ai musicisti solo delle indicazioni preventive di massima, più che altro istruzioni qualitative legate all’acustica delle sei stagioni dell’Artico, lasciando a loro il compito di ‘immergersi’ in quei suoni naturali con tecniche personali e completa immaginazione improvvisativa; nelle fasi preparatorie delle registrazioni su CD è molto probabile che i musicisti abbiano avuto la possibilità di ascoltare l’audio sottoposto da Liang e abbiano così individuato certe corrispondenze: da una parte per suoni instabili o acuti c’è bisogno di armonici o multifonici equivalenti, dall’altra per fasi acustiche caratterizzate da alta densità sonora è necessario individuare tecniche estensive specifiche (1). Lo scopo è quello di creare interazioni complesse come in un laboratorio scientifico dove si fanno esperimenti, tentativi, si studiano i casi e si raccolgono ipotesi e queste sessioni di Six Seasons Instrumentation Lab sono indicative di un progresso progettuale in cui si scoprono affinità espressive tra suoni e linguaggi, si scopre l’utilità previsionale dei codici acustici nonché la sfumatura sempre più netta tra composizione e improvvisazione, dove quest’ultima acquisisce un nuovo ruolo, non solo di carattere artistico ma di propulsione di una dinamicità ragionata.

L’ascolto di Six Seasons Instrumentation Lab va fatto in modalità immersiva. Mettete una cuffia e alzate il volume per sintonizzarvi con attenzione sui suoni, cercando di non essere messi fuori gioco dalle simulazioni o dalle risposte non coordinate dei musicisti. Ma se succede è fantastico. C’è anche un’altra motivazione che si matura con sempre maggior convinzione durante e dopo l’ascolto, ossia quella che ci fa interrogare sulla possibilità di ‘parlare con i suoni’: possiamo sviluppare attraverso la voce o gli strumenti musicali un’articolazione fonetica in grado di dialogare con la Natura o con gli animali? Oggi sappiamo che il mondo animale utilizza richiami acustici intenzionali utili per la sopravvivenza (i cetacei li usano per coordinarsi, per la riproduzione, gli uccelli per riconoscere un differente predatore, i delfini usano fischi per chiamarsi tra loro, etc.), così come la Natura genera suoni biologici e geofisici da interpretare, ma ci siamo mai chiesti se il nostro linguaggio di comunicazione è adeguato? Per rispondere a questa domanda dobbiamo fare i conti con i processi di sviluppo dell’umanità che hanno messo da parte tutti quei linguaggi che si affidano a suoni senza usare le parole e poi cercare di capire se il progresso scientifico e informatico ci metterà in condizione di parlare con la Natura o con gli animali ribaltando il compito istruttivo, ossia di non dover essere noi ad insegnare la nostra lingua ma di usare tecnologie e decodifica dei suoni degli animali e della Natura per imparare una nouvelle langue acoustique. Su questo punto esiste già una ricerca specifica, in grado di costruire alfabeti fonetici da condividere o addirittura tradurre i versi animali o i suoni della natura in linguaggio umano attraverso l’AI.

Vale la pena di ricordare che negli ultimi due anni Liang sta continuando ad approfondire sul versante dei suoni e la sua ricerca si è espansa sugli infrasuoni, ossia quei suoni che l’uomo non può percepire per via dei suoi limiti uditivi delimitati in un range di frequenze. Il progetto The Inaudible Ocean è costruito in modo tale da rendere udibili questi suoni tramite una loro manipolazione informatica che sfrutta anche un vistoso rallentamento delle velocità, dal momento che spesso questi infrasuoni (anche se udibili) bucherebbero il nostro cervello a causa della loro rapidità. Così formati, questi suoni vengono poi catturati in un audio che diventa la living score dei musicisti sul palco del concerto che li ospita, con compiti non dissimili da quelli già visti con il Six Seasons Instrumentation Lab (2).

Translation:

Lei Liang: Listening Beyond the Human Ear

In these pages, I have always written about the music of composer Lei Liang with deep personal engagement. My enthusiasm in following Lei’s artistic journey has never diminished—not only because I know his history and professional trajectory well, but above all because his work resonates so profoundly with what I seek in music: an art form that explores the intersections of science, creativity, and social responsibility.

Liang has pursued ethnomusicological inquiry with remarkable dedication, engaging with endangered Asian musical traditions while integrating elements of Chinese cultural heritage into the language of the Western avant-garde. At the Qualcomm Institute at the University of California San Diego, he created a multidisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and art historians to produce a remarkable sonification of a painting by Huang Binhong through the high-resolution multispectral scanning project Hearing Landscape. He has confronted urgent questions of social justice in the United States, reflecting on the devastating consequences of gun violence through Inheritance, inspired by the Winchester rifle, and addressing the exploitation of migrants along the U.S.–Mexico border in Cuatro Corridos. More recently, climate change has become one of his central concerns. Drawing upon extraordinary field recordings captured by hydrophones beneath the Arctic Ocean, Liang has translated the dramatic cycles of seasonal ice formation and fracture into sound, as heard in Hearing Icescapes and Six Seasons.

Yet Liang’s exploration of this subject is far from complete. He continues to discover new contexts in which creativity and a deeper understanding of climate change can converge. In April, Focus Recordings released a double CD that expands upon the concepts behind Hearing Icescapes and Six Seasons, while also opening new possibilities in terms of instrumentation and musical collaboration.

To understand the evolution of this work, one must consider its development over time. Liang and his close collaborator, oceanographer Joshua Jones, have spent eight years conducting sonic research in marine environments—a research process that has become increasingly refined. While Hearing Icescapes documented the underwater sound world during an early stage of the project, involving three musicians (flute, violin, and trumpet), Six Seasons already demonstrated a broader artistic and scientific scope. This expanded vision resulted in two recordings: one exploring the interaction between a string quartet and electronics (performed by the Mivos Quartet), and another centered on the deeply sensitive interpretation of Marco Fusi on violin and viola d’amore.

Although Six Seasons Instrumentation Lab, the new double album from Focus Recordings, draws upon the same scientific source material as Hearing Icescapes and Six Seasons, it offers further layers of experimentation: new instrumental approaches, new performers, and new possibilities for electronic processing. Liang constructs the album along two parallel paths of interpretation. The first CD features a series of musicians performing as soloists; the second is entrusted to an eight-member ensemble.

The participating musicians include pianist Stephen Drury—Liang’s longtime friend and frequent collaborator—guitarist Jesse Langen, harpist Ben Melsky, bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward, cellist Tyler J. Borden, and the unconventional quartet loadbang, featuring Ty Bouque, Andrew Kozar, William Lang, and Adrian Sandì on baritone voice, trumpet, trombone, and bass clarinet respectively. The second CD is performed entirely by the ensemble nec[shivaree], conducted by Drury and consisting of French horn, viola, cello, double bass, two electric guitars, and two pianos. Throughout both recordings, Liang shapes the electronic processing and spatial diffusion through a DSP system, assisted on the first disc by Charles Deluga.

As in his previous experiments, the musicians of Six Seasons Instrumentation Lab do not perform from a traditional score. Instead, their score is a “living score”: the processed audio recordings of the Arctic ecosystem itself, shaped by Liang and Deluga. Liang offers the performers only broad preliminary guidance—primarily qualitative instructions related to the acoustic characteristics of the Arctic’s six seasons—leaving them to immerse themselves in these natural sound worlds through their own techniques and improvisational imagination.

During the preparation of these recordings, the musicians likely had the opportunity to listen closely to Liang’s processed materials and discover their own points of connection. Fragile, unstable, or high-frequency sounds might call forth corresponding harmonics or multiphonics; dense acoustic environments might inspire particular extended techniques. The objective is not imitation, but interaction.

The result resembles a scientific laboratory: experiments are conducted, possibilities are tested, phenomena are examined, and hypotheses emerge. The sessions of Six Seasons Instrumentation Lab reveal the ongoing evolution of a project in which expressive affinities between sounds and languages are discovered. They reveal the predictive potential of acoustic codes and illuminate an increasingly fluid boundary between composition and improvisation. Improvisation here assumes a new role—not merely as artistic expression, but as the engine of a thoughtful, dynamic process of discovery.

Listening to Six Seasons Instrumentation Lab requires immersion. Put on headphones, raise the volume, and allow yourself to enter fully into the sound world. Listen closely without resisting the simulations, unexpected responses, or apparent disconnections among the performers. And if you find yourself disoriented—wonderful. That, too, is part of the experience.

Another question gradually emerges, both during and after listening: can we “speak through sounds”? Can the human voice or musical instruments develop a kind of phonetic articulation capable of communicating with Nature or with animals?

We now know that the animal world relies on intentional acoustic signals essential for survival: cetaceans use sound for coordination and reproduction; birds distinguish predators through calls; dolphins identify and call one another through whistles. Likewise, Nature generates biological and geophysical sounds waiting to be interpreted. But have we ever truly questioned whether our own systems of communication are adequate?

To answer this, we must confront the course of human development, which has gradually abandoned many forms of communication based on sound rather than words. We must ask whether advances in science and technology may one day allow us to communicate with Nature and animals by reversing the traditional direction of learning—not teaching them our language, but using technology and the decoding of natural and animal sounds to learn a nouvelle langue acoustique: a new acoustic language.

Research in this field is already underway, seeking to construct shared phonetic systems and even to translate animal voices or natural sounds into human language through artificial intelligence.

It is also worth noting that over the past two years, Liang has continued to deepen his exploration of sound, extending his research into the realm of the inaudible: sounds beyond the limits of human perception. The Inaudible Ocean seeks to reveal these hidden sonic worlds by making them audible through digital transformation, including dramatic changes in speed and scale. Without such transformation, these sounds—even if brought into the audible range—would often pass through our perception too quickly for the human brain to comprehend.

Once transformed, these sounds become a new kind of audio environment: a living score for musicians on the concert stage. Their role is not unlike that explored in Six Seasons Instrumentation Lab: to listen, respond, and enter into dialogue with worlds of sound that have existed all along, waiting for us to learn how to hear them.

— Ettore Garzia, 6.17.2026