To Soar and to Scurry

Composer Vivian Fung talks about her new concerto for violin and percussion, Goddess/Insect, which she wrote for violinist Kristin Lee and Sandbox Percussion.

Nicky Swett: The combination of violin and percussion ensemble is quite rare. What are some precedents for it?

Vivian Fung: One early piece for that combination is Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Five Percussionists (1959). Harrison was from around where I live in California; he founded the Cabrillo Festival, where I will be this summer. He feels very close to home, and so among the things that I wanted to do in my piece was pay homage to him. We share a fascination with Gamelan [Balinese percussion] music and specifically homemade Gamelan instruments.

NS: How do elements from Gamelan music crop up in Goddess/Insect?

VF: I was a member of a Gamelan orchestra in New York for about 10 years. My first violin concerto, which I wrote for Kristin, is based on Gamelan music. It seeps into my music from time to time. In this case, part of the piece is called “Junk Yard Gamelan.” It uses Almglocken [tuned cowbells] that are detuned with silly putty. Then there are wooden slats and this really cool thing that Ian Rosenbaum plays. It’s actually a coil from an engine. Then there are some metal pipes—just some rods. That’s where the junkyard comes in into play. It gets pretty raucous with those instruments.

The Almglocken are mimicking gongs, so it’s like a disjointed, quirky Gamelan. I am also using some of the Gamelan scales and you find some of the traditional interlocking rhythms at the beginning, but then it branches out. It has the idea of metallophones, but instead of bronze instruments like you find in true Gamelan, you have a metal coil and things like that. It’s Gamelan-inspired alla Harrison, using everyday objects to mimic that. But it’s also a new thing because the sounds are made from different instruments.

NS: The title of the piece is quite evocative. Why put “Goddess” and “Insect” together? Is there a specific story you are trying to tell?

VF: You have this dynamic of one violin soloist, who’s female, and then four male percussionists who are surrounding her. The title combines a grandiose idea of the soaring violin and these really tiny, creature-like sounds of insects and scurrying that can be made with percussion. I was also grappling with what was going on in our world today. There’s a psychological complex that a lot of Gen-Z people have identified with, which is the “God-Bug” complex. It’s the feeling of being outwardly very superior, but in fact, inside you’ve got all these thoughts of inferiority.

I’ve written a number of pieces about insects, including my fourth string quartet, which is called “Insects and Machines.” I actually have a phobia of spiders. I think my fascination with insects is the psychological exploration of all the little, creepy, crawly things in your mind that you don’t want to look at, but they end up rising to the surface because you’re suppressing them. It’s also a way for me to put into my compositions the idea of this trauma that we feel collectively, and how we deal with it.

NS: Have you worked with Kristin and Sandbox Percussion before?

VF: I have known Kristin for a long time. She is one of my former students from when I was teaching at Juilliard. I wrote my first violin concerto for her as well as Birdsong [for Violin and Piano] and Twist [for Violin and Guitar]. I know Kristin’s performing so well, so I could also have her sound clearly in mind when I was composing the piece.

I also wrote a piece called Unwandering Souls for Sandbox Percussion. I went to Sandbox’s recent concert that they did with Andy Akiho’s piece Seven Pillars. I had ideas from that performance about their virtuosity, but also their detailedness in creating the sounds they want. I have really gotten to know their playing and their personalities and how they work.

NS: How much did you go back and forth with the performers while working on the piece?

VF: We collectively decided that before we had the premiere in Seattle in March, we would go through a workshop period. Starting in the fall of 2025, I would email Sandbox about sounds. I use a lot of sounds that you would not usually consider part of a concert percussion list. Normally you think about percussion as something that is struck with a mallet or a stick. But the first thing that I asked Sandbox for was to give me sounds that require sustained bowing on the percussion instrument because I was writing for violin.

We traded a bunch of emails, and that exploration became the opening of the piece, which is called “Arachnid Procession.” Everybody starts in the audience except for Jonny Allen, who’s right in the center of the stage with a metal sheet. The others are bowing crotales [small, tuned cymbals] and then immersing them in water, which bends the pitch. That creates this wobbly sound world. The violin enters, and she’s doing a very similar thing, but using artificial harmonics. Then Victor Caccese is bowing a flexatone [an instrument in which the pitch is adjusted by squeezing pieces of metal together] and mirroring the sounds of the violin. It’s this otherworldly atmosphere, like man-made surround sound. Then they process onto the stage and that’s how it all starts.

We had a workshop in December where I had a draft of the piece and we fine-tuned exactly what sounds that I wanted. We were experimenting with a lot of different things. I was trying to create the sounds of leaves, and I brought some actual leaves to the workshop, but it didn’t end up working out so we used shakers, caxixis [closed baskets filled with small objects] and goat-nail shakers. We’ve gone through seven or eight revisions because of the specificity of what Soundbox was aiming for. It was a true collaboration, which is a wonderful gift because I got to work with them on such a detailed level.

Cellist, writer, and music researcher Nicky Swett is a program annotator and editorial contributor at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.