Swarthmore Music Department’s newest faculty member, Professor Lei Ouyang Bryant, is no stranger to small liberal arts colleges—this is her fourteenth year of teaching at one. However, her experiences as both a teacher and musician stretch far beyond that scope. As an ethnomusicologist specializing in East Asia and Asian America, she has also traveled to California, Ethiopia, and Taiwan to teach piano, violin, music, English, and dance to age groups spanning preschool to adult.

Professor Bryant’s musical background is as diverse and extensive as her teaching experiences. She studied violin, piano, and ballet throughout childhood and college, and learned Chinese music and dance growing up in her local Chinese American community in Minnesota. She also took up Taiko drumming during a semester abroad in Japan. After her undergraduate studies, she spent two years traveling and teaching, which deepened her interests in ethnomusicology. Says Professor Bryant, “I examine issues of music and memory, identity, politics, race and ethnicity, popular culture, and social justice. Ethnomusicology combines my interests in music, culture, and research.” This year, she will teach “Music Cultures of the World,” “Taiko & the Asian American Experience,” and “Music, Race, and Class,” and is currently co-directing the Music Department’s new Chinese Music ensemble.

Professor Bryant attended a small liberal arts college for undergraduate studies, and highly values the relationships she had with professors and peers in shaping her personal and professional life. When asked about teaching at Swarthmore, she responds, “I am honored to be able to work with undergraduate students in so many different facets of their lives. There is a very long list of reasons why I was interested in coming to Swarthmore, and at the top is the College’s strong commitment to access and civic engagement along with the diverse and highly motivated student body.” Professor Bryant believes her field of ethnomusicology is an ideal fit for a small liberal arts school because of the interdisciplinarity of the subject, and she looks forward to building connections with other courses and professors. “It is incredibly exciting to join a department of faculty to share a deep commitment to students as well as their own professional work as scholars and artists.”

Maya Kikuchi ’20

Photo by Gary Gold

“What might seem the most innocuous music is often the most avant-garde,” writes Ted Gordon on Gunther Schuller’s 1962 oeuvre “Journey into Jazz,” which Chamber Orchestra First Editions (COFE) will perform on Oct. 6 at Lang Concert Hall. Former Congressman and longtime LGBT rights advocate Barney Frank will narrate the piece, a story reminiscent of Peter and the Wolf with an experimental twist: third-stream jazz, or a blend of classical and jazz music. Additionally, NYC-based drummer and composer Gabriel Globus-Hoenich will add a brand-new piece to the COFE program, “Shattered Stones,” which will accompany two of Mozart’s early works, the Piano Concerto No. 21 and Symphony No. 29.

Mozart composed Symphony No. 29 at only 18 years old, while still living in Salzburg, Austria. According to Daniel Underhill Professor Emeritus of Music James Freeman, founder and Musical Director of COFE, Mozart may have paired the intimate feel of the piece with a striking finale in order to convince his father and even himself that he was talented enough to continue his career in Vienna.“It’s unlike any symphony that he had written up until this time,” Freeman said. “To see him suddenly produce a piece like the symphony that we’ll see at the end of the concert is sort of amazing. It just comes out of the blue.”

Both Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 414  and  Symphony No. 29 were written in A major, a key that imparts on them a “lyrical, singing quality,” according to Professor Andrew Hauze, who will be featured as soloist on the Concerto.  Mozart composed the Concerto just after he had arrived in Vienna at last, eight years after he wrote Symphony No. 29.

But what’s Congressman Barney Frank doing at a Mozart performance? After deciding to feature “Journey into Jazz,” Freeman asked himself, “Who would be an interesting narrator for this piece, a person who would perhaps—I hope—bring a different kind of audience to our concerts, a different kind of audience than has ever come before?”

Frank will also participate alongside Freeman and Hauze in a pre-show discussion at 7:30 P.M. before the 8 P.M. concert. Rehearsals for the show will be open to members of the Swarthmore community.

“I would say all of these pieces [in the COFE program] share a kind of vibrancy and energy, and to have Congressman Frank involved… for one thing, I never imagined that I would be the soloist on a program where he’s also the soloist,” Hauze said.

Freeman feels that this season’s COFE program will provide something to intrigue everyone, from connoisseurs of classical to jazz junkies to all Swarthmore students and staff.

“I just want people to experience recent classical new music, because I think people tend to be a little afraid of it as being too hard for them to understand, but’s it not,” Freeman said. “I hope they’ll hear the Mozart pieces and say, ‘Wow! I didn’t know Mozart was that interesting,’ because I think every note that guy wrote was interesting.”

                             Bayliss Wagner ’21