“She helped a lot of people for their early careers," Yang said. "She was the head of many institutions. She promoted women and women’s work. (Chang and I) both were really in love with her music immediately. Her music really conveys a lot of emotions very easily."
Florence Price was a Black composer from Arkansas. In 1933, she became the first female composer of African descent whose symphonic work was performed by a major American symphony orchestra.
Yang spoke about Price's masterful talent and the variety of influences she drew from in her music.
“(Price) had really impressive compositional skills and her language, musical language, is also really amazing," Yang said. "She draws from spirituals and there’s also a lot of Western techniques in her approach as well. Her music is just really emotional and obviously really reflects her personal experience.”
The third composer, Ugay, is an award-winning assistant professor of composition at Florida State University. She composed a piece titled "Mother Tales" specifically for this performance.
Yang spoke about the connection she has to both Chang and Ugay. All three are Asian-American mothers, which makes the performance particularly special, she said.
"It’s really wonderful to be able to collaborate with other Asian musicians," Yang said.
Yang said she doesn't take issue with what’s already included in the core repertoire of classical music in higher education, but she wants to add to it. Specifically, she wants to highlight the work of underrepresented composers — not just for their identities but for their talent as well.
“Classical music has a core repertoire that often doesn’t include these composers, so we want to elevate the underrepresented composers, their works,” Yang said. “My point is that it’s not just to say because they’re women we want to play them, which is a good reason too, but I want to emphasize that their works are really incredible. The merit of their work is worthy of any concert hall, and that’s the point.”
In her classes last fall, Yang said she assigned a project that focused on researching and then performing the work of Black composers.
“It was at once encouraging and dismaying to uncover so many previously lesser known or lesser heard artists and composers,” one of Yang's students, Sydney Thai, a senior studying biology and music, said in an email. “There have been so many pieces by African American composers that are quirky, nuanced and full of meaning, yet are lesser-known or played simply because the composers did not have the same exposure or opportunity that their white colleagues had.”
Thai performed Price’s "Fantasie No. 2" in G minor. A video of the entire class’ performance is available on the UNC Department of Music’s YouTube channel.
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With the upcoming spring performance, Chang said in an email statement that she is grateful for the chance to share their dream project through the UNC Process Series. She will be performing alongside Yang in "Her Story: Journey into the Musical Worlds of Women Composers."
Chang was born in South Korea and left the country when she was 14 to study music across the globe. Her personal experiences have impacted how she has engaged with the classical music scene, she said.
"Upon looking back, there were many incidents where they were really about the fact I was a young girl from Asia, hence race, gender, age. I didn't think much of it then, and even throughout my graduate school years," Chang wrote. "Now, as a mature adult, I think more about what kind of influence I can have as a musician on the next generation of artists and what I can do to encourage the classical music scene to bring the balance it needs."
Yang is also excited about the new direction that classical music is going in.
"I think it’s really interesting and really great that people are starting to think about things more broadly," Yang said. "I wanted to sort of push the boundary of the definition of classical music. It’s really not just what people think.”
@_aishabee_
university@dailytarheel.com | elevate@dailytarheel.com
Aisha BaiocchiAisha Baiocchi is the 2023-24 enterprise managing editor at The Daily Tar Heel. She has previously served as a senior writer on the university desk. Aisha is a junior majoring in journalism at UNC and international comparative studies at Duke University, as well as a minor in history.
