Ruiqi Wang: subduing the silence with vocal improvisation

(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

LP: As a way to get started, many strands and traditions seem to come together in your music. I'm curious how you came to integrate all that music and the stages of you being introduced to that music throughout your life.

Ruiqi Wang: I started studying music full-time quite late. Growing up, I listened to mostly Chinese pop music and some classical music because I played classical piano, but that's almost all. When I was eighteen or nineteen, I started university in psychology. I wasn't even aware there was a music program at my university.

But I have always wanted to be a musician, so when I was nineteen, I started listening to jazz and taking private jazz voice lessons. Up until then, I really focused on learning jazz and the tradition. Eventually, I switched to a music major in my undergrad. That's when I started hearing more music and became interested in contemporary classical music.

I took a music history class on twentieth-century European and American classical music and was intrigued. I don't know why—maybe it's my personality. I was just amazed by how creative those composers were. So that was, I guess, a further development in the music I listened to. Later, towards the end of my undergrad, I started to get curious about the music of my own tradition.

So that's about maybe two years ago; that's when I started researching Chinese traditional music. I asked myself the same question: how do they come together? I don't know how to answer that. I think it's just the experience and knowledge I learn and the understanding I develop as I research and learn more about music. I guess now music is just music for me.

LP: Who were some of those composers that really captured you? You mentioned being very drawn to or inspired by some modern classical composers.

Ruiqi Wang: It was a class with a lot of information in one semester, and I was hearing the names for the first time, like Stockhausen, Ligeti, and the minimalist composers like Steve Reich, and all those people, and of course, John Cage, Messiaen.

LP: I understand McGill is more of a conservatory-type study. I have a few questions about how you changed majors. Was the process itself difficult? I would imagine you don't just walk in and change your major.

Ruiqi Wang: You're right. McGill is really like a conservatory. I started by finding some professors and students at McGill in the music department teaching voice. I started just by taking some private lessons. My mom is supportive, so she's paying for all my expenses so I can just focus on learning. I took classical and jazz voice lessons, trying to figure out what I wanted to do because I only wanted to study music.

I chose jazz because it felt more fun, and I could add some creative input to this type of music. So, I took private lessons for about a year or so. Then, I went through the same process as the high school students who came in. I had to audition, and I think it's a pretty selective program. It's very competitive. First, I became a more general music major with little performance opportunity. And then I tried again, and then I got into performance.

LP: Wow, it's a very short time period to have accomplished all of those milestones. It's staggering to think about.

Ruiqi Wang: Yeah, I think so too. [laughs]

I think it's just something I really wanted to do, and I just love music and singing, and I really wanted to make it work as my career. And I did put a lot of work into it. Yeah, but at the same time, it was a lot of information, and I'm happy I made much progress. But sometimes, looking back, right now, I'm trying to just reconnect with my love for music and just try to really not do it as a school or task at all.

That's what I'm trying to get back to right now. It's nice how much progress I made, but I think it was trial and error, and sometimes I work way too much.

LP: I can't think of another conservatory or academically trained artist I've spoken with who was a vocalist. Most were either pianists or some external instrument. What is a vocalist studying? What is the practice of being a vocalist? It seems so difficult for me to imagine. It's so much easier to understand a pianist practicing piano, learning repertoire, and learning technique. Is there as much to study for a vocalist as for an instrumentalist?

Ruiqi Wang: I think you're right in the sense that for vocalists, it's much more difficult to organize the practice and kind of have the routine because this instrument, we can't touch it. And it's also so much about our feelings, mood, etc. So it's really abstract. In practice, I think that there are different aspects.

So, of course, we practice the technique. So the voice itself, like how the resonance places work and breathing and how to project the sound, how to have as much space as possible in our resonance cavity and all that, you know, have a nice sound and explore different sounds. At the same time, there's also the ear part, learning a certain kind of melodic language. In jazz, we do a lot of transcriptions. So try to learn like a solo by a saxophone or something like that. On top of that, there's also repertoire, of course, learning songs, and different people have different methods. Some people are really ear-based; they learn everything by ear and don't read much. Some people try to get good at sight reading for instruments like us who don't have buttons to press.

LP: I appreciate that insight. And again, because it all happened so quickly for you, I'm intrigued by the process, specifically as you went through it—the learning of the technique and the methodology while also discovering your voice while being a music student in an intensive way for the first time. It's really intriguing to me. You also mentioned how, as you shifted throughout the programs, performance became a bigger part of what you were looking to do and what you could do. Can you talk briefly about the opportunities in a city like Montreal? What was there for you? Is there a vibrant scene? Were there opportunities to be on stage?

Ruiqi Wang: I would say there's a pretty nice and diverse scene in Montreal. As part of the school, there are a lot of performances at the halls at school. And McGill collaborates with a very prestigious jazz bar called Upstairs.

LP: Oh, okay.

Ruiqi Wang: There is a night every week. I remember it was Tuesday nights when the student bands got to perform. Each band gets maybe two performances each semester at the bar. I know there's a pretty big hip-hop scene and French pop scene, but I don't really know about that because that's not the music I'm particularly drawn to. There's also a nice experimental music scene. There are a few venues and an organization called Suoni Per Il Popolo that's really community-based and focuses on creative and experimental music.

LP: Something I've observed in my conversations, especially over the last six to twelve months with artists around the world, is that there does seem to be quite an emerging movement at the local and regional levels in various parts of North America and Europe, at least. Around this intersection of electro-acoustic music, improvised music, jazz, and electronics. I guess what we would maybe broadly call experimental. But it's a very exciting moment in the independent music world where academia meets clubs. It's kind of interesting. Really trained, proficient people doing very exciting work—it reminds me a lot of what the Minimalists came out of in the late sixties and early seventies. That sort of training plus improvisation. Does that resonate with you at all? Do you witness that?

Ruiqi Wang: I think there are different types of musicians in each city coming from each school. And this group of musicians is always interested in pushing the music forward and doing experimental stuff. And I think it's also a natural tendency for many of us because we all grew up listening to various music. So, as musicians or artists, where do we stand? And so it's really nice to have a space and stage to explore new sounds and be experimental.

I see that in Montreal, and there is a very nice, creative, new music community in Bern, Switzerland. That community may be more prominent because the school here is an art school and not much of a jazz tradition. In Montreal, many people play straight-ahead jazz and focus on passing on a tradition. Which makes sense if that music is what they listened to growing up. But yeah, for many people, we are interested in all kinds of things. And social topics as well. And so I think there's a lot of space to express ourselves in experimental music and free improvisation.

LP: Could you talk a little bit about the role of, I guess broadly speaking, social topics and the importance of having an all-female ensemble, I guess the idea, like the social issues, but the notion of representation, like how are these things manifesting in your work, if at all?

Ruiqi Wang: I think it does. It's never something I try really hard to push. Somehow, they just happen because of every little choice I make. For example, the band I had for my album that's all female. But initially, I didn't have that intention at all; I just came across all those wonderful female musicians. I love playing with all of them. And it's not because they're female; it's because of who they are. And at last, I had an all-female lineup. And, of course, I know that in jazz, gender representation is huge. A lot of the time, it's not that equal. So I was like, wow, this is awesome. And I like this energy. This is not what I usually come across, but this is what I have now.

And it's nice for my other music too. Sometimes, it's nice to be a little bit political in my music, and I try to be really careful with it, and I'm never like, "Oh, I'm gonna write this piece about feminism" or things like that. It all evolves as I live my life and talk to people, and sometimes I would be like, oh, what if I just add a little spoken word in this song? It sounds like it could be about that issue, and I want to speak briefly about it.

LP: Do you have any sense of your record, the latest album—it's very hard to believe how distinct and fully formed your voice is, knowing this part of your biography about how much of your development has only happened in the last few years. It's a stunning, stunning record and a beautiful use of voice. Congratulations on that.

Do you know how the album has been received in China? Do you know if it's been possible to find an audience there?

Ruiqi Wang: I have no idea because I didn't put it out in China. There are streaming services in China, and I haven't found time to deal with that, upload the music, and go through the copyright process. So, I do not know. You know, YouTube, Bandcamp, Spotify, and all that are unavailable in China.

LP: Do you sense that any themes or lyrical content could present problems?

Ruiqi Wang: That's a good question. And I don't—I know what you're asking about—with this album, I don't think so.

LP: Were you present for the sessions with the Craft Ensemble? Were you able to attend?

Ruiqi Wang: Yeah, I went to Boston for that.

LP: Could you talk about that experience a little bit?

Ruiqi Wang: Okay, so it was after my recording session with the Montreal Jazz Trio, and I flew to Boston about a week later, and I met them in person for the first time. We only met on Zoom before. It was just really nice. They were all really open. Before the recording session, I did a quarter-note-based meditative exercise for an hour. I was in a really nice, good state going into the studio with them. And it wasn't a lot of pressure for me because I was not singing on most of them.

They were overdubbing on the tracks. But I did sing with them on one of the tracks, and one of the band members could see me through the window of the voice room. It's a half-rubato piece, so I was half conducting them and breathing together with them. I can tell it's an ensemble that has been playing together for a long time, and they each have a nice relationship with each other, so it's just a really nice and warm recording session with them.

LP: What did you bring? Was it charts and scores, or how does integrating an ensemble like that work?

Ruiqi Wang: I brought them the scores. So, they each have the scores for the string section. They didn't know what the piano and bass drums were doing but knew what each other was doing from their scores. And I sent that to them before the session. We had a Zoom rehearsal where they played through the music. There was a little organization because they were overdubbing, so they needed to know when to play. Sometimes, I have to conduct them so they can feel the time better because in classical and jazz, the music works very differently, and the musicians feel the time and pause very differently. They each had the string scores and were reading off their iPads.

LP: That's really an incredible experience to be able to lead the ensemble that way. And what an incredibly rich experience throughout that whole process of making that record. There are so many traditions integrated seamlessly, even in the melody, never mind the composition and arrangement. It's just a wonderful achievement.

Could you tell me a little bit about the compositions themselves? Did you compose knowing you were creating an album, or were these pieces that—rather than speculate, could you just talk briefly about how the compositional process and intention came together?

Ruiqi Wang: Now I think about albums a lot when I write music, but back then, I wasn't; it was pieces that I've been writing in maybe one or two years before that. Over time, I had a collection of pieces that seemed to work well together. And I personally liked and have performed with mostly a jazz trio in public. I think it was on a bike ride in the summer in Montreal, and I just started hearing strings on one of my pieces. I started brainstorming. Oh, what if I really do it? And then I brought it up to my teacher, who's also my producer, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, and she's like, "Oh, this is an awesome idea, and I think we should really do it." And that's how it came about. So, I spent months and a year or two slowly writing the pieces without intending to make an album. Maybe the three months before I recorded it was the period of writing and arranging, where I wrote all the strings.

LP: How was Craft Ensemble chosen? How was that string section chosen?

Ruiqi Wang: Actually, the viola player Amelia and Craft Ensemble went to school together with my teacher Ayelet. Ayelet recommended the ensemble to me, and I went to listen to them. They have a beautiful sound. So I decided to go with them.

LP: You mentioned your meditation before the session. Could you talk a bit about that practice, what a quarter-note meditation is, and what role that practice plays in your artistic life?

Ruiqi Wang: It's an exercise I got from a teacher I had at McGill. His name is John Hollenbeck. He's a drummer-percussionist and has this famous quarter-note exercise and a seminar at McGill about this exercise. We play slow quarter notes in any instrument, mostly with a metronome, and subdivide each beat.

In this case, we mostly use the subdivision of nine and have different variations of this exercise. There's a basic form where we just play a short quarter note with our instrument, and then the metronome, which would be about twenty to thirty beats per minute, plays on the fifth subdivision of each beat, and we just do that for however long.

Usually, I do that as the first thing of my practice, as centering and waking up my brain. And it's very meditative. So, that day, I was supposed to be at McGill for the last class of the semester, where we played the basic exercise together for an hour. And I wasn't able to attend class because of the recording session.

So I asked John, "What should I do? I really don't want to miss it." And he said, "Well, you can do it alone." So I did it for an hour. I didn't know what effect it would have. Still, during that hour, I was getting really aware of all the parts of my body and my own voice in a good way, like body awareness. It calmed me down so much, and I felt I was in a much more peaceful state and could accept many more things in general after that hour.

LP: From reading a bit about you, I understand that you've also had a practice or some work around the deep listening modality. I've only become acquainted with that in the last maybe nine months or so, as I've learned more about Pauline Oliveros, who I always knew her name, but I was not as familiar with her work until much more recently. Could you talk a little bit about that tradition?

Ruiqi Wang: I took a deep listening course online with the Deep Listening Institute that Pauline created. It's a long-term course, and it's divided into different stages. I heard about Pauline at school, and I just got interested. So I looked her up, and I was really amazed—like, there's an institute for listening. "Oh my God! That's so cool!" And then, I signed up for their mailing list. And finally, there's a spot for the class. So I took it for three months, and over the course, other students around the world and I met every week, and we had exercises in between. And the first month was about listening. And the second month is about listening in movement. The third month was about listening and dreaming. Yeah, there's so much about it I can talk about. And it changed the way I live my daily life. An important notion is to remember to listen.

LP: What is the benefit of remembering to listen? Or maybe I can ask it a different way. Why should one want to remember to listen?

Ruiqi Wang: My answer, a simple answer that I personally have to that is just, it feels good. Often, when I walk on the street, we hear things all the time, everywhere, but we don't pay attention to them necessarily, most of the time, I think. But just the notion of remembering to listen. When I walk on the street, for example, I remember to listen to my surroundings and sometimes sounds, noise, and cars driving by. If I don't remember to listen to them, they're just like background noises that drown into my subconscious and maybe make me more irritable or grumpy. But when I pay attention to them and be open, curious, and even non-judgmental, they become sounds and interesting things, things I can be curious about.

LP: Yeah, I can imagine, even as mundane as you can hear the rhythm in construction sites or melody coming from a passing train or whatever it may be that you're hearing—that transition of noise to sound to music is an interesting continuum.

Ruiqi Wang: But even not that interesting, just like boring things or in my room right now, there's a slow humming. I might just not notice at all, but when I listen to it, it's like, "Oh, wait, there's a sound. What about this sound? What does it sound like? What are the characteristics of it?" And then I start to slow down and breathe.

LP: Do those sounds today? Or do you see a future where that makes its way into your music?

Ruiqi Wang: Always, not necessarily, but they always come into my consciousness, and they could be a source of inspiration. Yeah, because now I'm thinking about just taking field recordings and adding them to music or kind of orchestrating a soundscape, that kind of thing. Of course, that's a possibility, and I'm interested in doing that.

And also, just by listening more, even in normal playing, you start noticing all the nuanced differences in how people play their instruments. And I think when our awareness of sound is on that level, there's a lot in what's already there.

LP: One of the other things I read about you is that you still teach other musicians and artists. Maybe I read it on your website when I was preparing. One of your offerings was artistic development. What does that mean? Is that how someone finds their voice? Is it mentorship? What does that mean in the context of being a pedagogue? What is "artistic development?"

Ruiqi Wang: It's along the line of what you mentioned, and I think each person is unique. Most of my students aren't professional musicians or artists, but I believe in the artistry in each of them. I think each of them has the potential to create music and artwork of their own.

So I really respect that and try to figure out what this person in front of me is like and what they would do if they had enough confidence to create their own music and art vision. I think that's what I mean, and I try to understand what my student is like as a human overall, and it's not just about learning a style or trying to execute certain things really well.

LP: Where are you going next in your work? Do you have the vision yet? Have you started work?

Ruiqi Wang: Yeah, I just moved to Switzerland, so that's really exciting. I'm meeting many new people and getting to know the scene here, which I'm really happy about. I've been writing a lot currently for different ensembles and for the new musicians I met.

I have two trios, and we are already building repertoires and new music. I actually just came from a rehearsal at school. It's been great. And it's a trio with myself—I'm voice—an electric bass player, and a drummer. Yeah, I'm gonna try to keep writing music and performing with these small groups, and at the same time, I want to do some larger projects with maybe a jazz orchestra or maybe more like a classical music ensemble setting, and I'd like to conduct my own pieces.

I see a lot of possibilities at this school, so I want to do some interdisciplinary stuff. I return to China occasionally on my vacations, so I try to connect with the traditional musicians there whenever I return. So that's a long-term ongoing research that I'm doing.

LP: Have you done any formal studies in that tradition?

Ruiqi Wang: No, not yet. I don't have a musical upbringing, so nobody in my family really does a lot of music. So I didn't have the chance, and I'm trying to find teachers to study with back home.

LP: The vocal trio and the absence of another harmonic instrument—no piano—are very interesting. It's bold. It's a very bare presentation. What's attractive to you about that format?

Ruiqi Wang: First of all, I like the musicians, and it happens to be voice, bass, and drums. And I think I always like challenges. As a vocalist, I want to be a good vocalist and the other instruments. What can I do to do things that trumpet players or saxophone players can do? Can I try to do some drum things, maybe? So it's really fun when it's not that conventional instrumentation, and it leaves a lot of room for exploring things.

LP: I'm so looking forward to hearing more work from you, and I hope that as you develop more projects, you'll come back and talk about them. I look forward to many years of interesting music from you.

Ruiqi Wang: Thank you so much.