Melissa Hui was born in Hong Kong in 1966 and in 1974 immigrated to Canada with her family, where they settled in North Vancouver, BC. She studied at the California Institute of the Arts and at Yale University. Her composition mentors include Mel Powell, Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Morton Subotnick and Earl Kim. Hui composes music for orchestra, string quartet, a variety of other chamber ensembles, opera, and film. Her music has been performed throughout the world by major orchestras and ensembles. She has received many important international awards, including the Grand Prize at the CBC Young Composers Competition and du Maurier/WSO Canadian Composers’ Competition. Hui was a member of the composition faculty at Stanford University in California from 1994 to 2004.

Programme Note, Come as you are

Come as you are was commissioned by the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec, with financial assistance from the Canada Council. This work urges each performer to "Come as you are," with parts that highlight the unique qualities of their respective instruments. I have stripped the work to its stark essentials. Materials evolve, but in static tableaux enveloped by silence.

Credits: Hui, Melissa. Liner notes, and blue sparks burn; Centrediscs CMCCD 10605, 2006.
Creator: Melissa Hui
Subject: Come as you are
Date Created: 2006

Interview, Hui’s Cultural Influences: Hong Kong to Canada

“I believe that the richness of Canadian contemporary music stems from the individuality of Canadian composers who feel free to "come as they are." This cultural climate enables composers to be free to express themselves and is no doubt responsible for the diversity of thought, expression and technique in the music of Canadian composers.” – M.H.

Hui left Hong Kong when she was 8 years old and grew up on the west coast of Canada. Although she has inherited elements of many world traditions from these multi-cultural environments, she specifically acknowledges the role her Chinese heritage played in the “cyclical perception of time” expressed in her music. Hui’s music is generally not goal-oriented or harmonically-based, as is much of our Western music. As a result, her musical structures are not hierarchical and all elements play an equal role, encouraging the listener to find meaning in the ‘lack’ of drama. For example, in Come as you are, the form is articulated by four long silences between four tableaux of flat musical textures. Silence is thus as important as sound, for it divides the temporal canvas into snapshots and allows for reflection between them.

Hui does not deliberately try to construct a hybrid of cultures in her music. Most cultural influences on her work appear as discrete sound objects that have a specific sound, colour, texture, pitch content, rhythmic profile and register, so that when an obvious cultural element emerges, she utilizes its extra-musical ‘baggage’ to exploit the “friction [in] their juxtaposition.”

Credits: Dr. Mary Ingraham
Creator: Dr. Mary Ingraham
Subject: Melissa Hui | Come as you are
Date Created: 2007

CD Cover, and blue sparks burn

and blue sparks burn, music of Melissa Hui.

Credits: Mark Hand (design)
Creator: Mark Hand (design)
Subject: CD Cover | Melissa Hui
Date Created: 2006

Photograph, Pipa

A pipa, the solo instrument in Hui's Come as you are.

Credits: Charlie Huang, GNU Free Documentation License
Creator: Charlie Huang
Subject: Pipa
Date Created: 2000

• Magazine Article, Completely Contemporary (PDF 818 KB)
  

  Completely Contemporary is a magazine article on composer Melissa Hui written by Ray Chatelin (Arts Reporter in Vancouver) and printed in Words and Music in the February 1995 issue. Using extensive passages in the composer’s own words, Chatelin describes the variety in Hui’s musical language and compositional style and highlights influences from her dual heritage and experiences in Asian and North American music. Hui admits that she simply creates music she “like[s] to listen to,” and she describes the variety of influences on her compositions as “a sort of multi-culturalism of contemporary musical thought.” Compositions discussed include Changes, Speaking in Tongues, Common Ground, Foreign Affairs, and Shadow Play.

  
  Credits: Chatelin, Ray. Completely Contemporary; Words and Music, Vol. 2 No. 2, February 1995.
  Creator: Ray Chatelin
  Subject: Melissa Hui