Esther Wu

“I wanted to talk about how I personally felt after experiencing the very diverse and dramatic experience in Hong Kong… …I reflected a lot about how we as individuals should react to society, and the relationship between one[self] and society – all of that introspection.”

Esther Wu

Esther Wu is a composer, sound artist, and independent songwriter currently based in Hong Kong. Esther’s genre-defying work explores the versatility of different media and its boundaries, ranging from concert music and electracoustic sound installations to free improvisation, film, cross-media compositions, and pop songwriting. Esther’s compositions have been commissioned and performed by Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Residentie Orkest, The Up:Strike Project, and Hong Kong Gaudeamus Dunhuang Ensemble, among others; she was a ULYSSES Network artist with Creative Europe, participating in residencies with Gaudeamus Muziekweek, IRCAM ManiFeste, and Impuls. Esther studied at Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and Royal Conservatoire The Hague, where she studied with Guus Janssen and Yannis Kyriakides.

Alongside composition, Esther Wu has recently been making a name for herself as a songwriter, combining elements of contemporary music, 90’s electronica, progressive rock, and metal; following this recent development in her career, Patrick Ellis spoke with Esther over Zoom about her installations, societal intimacy, Jean-Paul Sartre, stage presence, and alter egos…

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Patrick/PRXLUDES: Hi Esther, many thanks for joining me today! We met just over five years ago when we were studying in The Hague. What were the contemporary and pop music scenes like in Hong Kong when you were growing up?

Esther Wu: I remember it was not that versatile back then – around 2014 to 2018, when I was studying in the Hong Kong Academy [of Performing Arts]. After covid it got better. Maybe it’s because one of my very good friends, Karen Yu; she is involved in a huge part of the new music scene in Hong Kong, because she’s becoming a curator of multiple music festivals. She has brought in a lot of overseas perspectives, because she studied in the US before as a percussionist. 

So after that, I noticed the scene was starting to get more versatile and not dominated by the more experienced composers in Hong Kong. They [the composers] were dominating the whole scene and they engaged an audience who were really only in the academic world; but since Karen has been participating more as a curator, different types of sound art festivals and sound art camps have come up in Hong Kong – we successfully included a lot of younger people into the scene. Even if they are not musicians, like actors or engineers [have] start[ed] to get interested in doing sound art more.¹

Were there no international groups or artists coming in and touring regularly prior to that? 

There were some collaborations with overseas artists [in] the composition programmes – collaborating with the new music ensembles. I know that they have been there for so long, and they have been mostly supporting and encouraging local artists of course – because if we don’t support each other, then no one will support us! But I also see them posting some online calls for scores and concerts which are open for artists of all nationalities. It’s always been there, but it’s just improved in the last couple of years since covid. 

I think covid actually encouraged different contemporary groups in Hong Kong [to] think about alternative ways to play around with this online platform of doing new music. There are internet art programmes that have happened in 2021. Some of my friends are involved – [there’s one] curated by Charles Kwong. It’s internet art – they just put it online and made it work online. It got the funding from the local government, so I think it is working well.

During that time, when you were growing up before 2014 – what were your earliest memories of music making? Did you start on an instrument and then fall into composing? Or was it through another way? And were you creative in other forms?

I learnt classical singing and piano during my high school years – a specialist music secondary school – and there were some really good teachers who inspired me [by saying] “You can do something like composition, maybe you can try that.” And then I gave it a shot. So I developed an interest and started composing pop songs when I was around 12 to 16; just being chaotic and doing whatever, just playing random things… trying to start a band and then failing. -laughs-

And then going into the Hong Kong Performing Arts Academy of Music – what kind of works were you making during that time? 

It was mostly instrumental writing with extended techniques – all that kind of stuff. We studied Penderecki, Ligeti, Takemitsu… it was basically 20th century composers that we studied the most during the four year programme. Afterwards, I went to The Hague and I found it weird that there’s actually much more repertoire that we can study, [like] multimedia and electronic [composition]. But our school back then just didn’t focus a lot on that. Even though the programme was called ‘Composition and Electronics’, the electronics part was not dominant. Towards the end of the Bachelor programme we needed to do at least one electronic piece and an orchestral work, as well as a multimedia performance. And that would be the first time I worked with electronics and collaborated with people across different disciplines.

In the institute was there a general aesthetic or approach that they tried to champion? And were there things that resonated with you at the time that you really adhered to, or things that you pushed against?

They were quite focused on the very early 20th century writings that they trained us to do. I didn’t do much to go against or resist – because it was just the first couple of years of me getting to know new music; understand[ing] what was going on in that world, and what was happening in the background. I was just trying to cope with it, even though it gave me a lot of thoughts about, “Why are we still doing this?” and “Who are the audience!?” -laughs- 

Because most of the time when we are doing department concerts, you notice that there are not a lot of people; that it’s only for students to support each other in what they do. It already felt to me like an ivory tower – you do everything by yourself, all the people with the same interests who just group together and do their own thing, but that’s it. I already had that strong feeling back then, but I did not do anything to go against it, I just tried to fit in. [I was] trying to understand the mindset. I talked to the teachers to understand what they think about the music scene; verbally, they are just encouraging us to do anything we want – “You can do pop music, whatever” – but no one dared to do it. -laughs- And no one dared to write a C major scale – since all the education we received [was] focusing on liberating ourselves from tonality and traditional writing approaches. There was just a little bit of suppression that we felt. 

Now thinking back, I think it’s pressure from some teachers within the department, it’s quite obvious that they are dominant with enforcing this aesthetic to us. That was the culture back then I feel.

In 2018, you moved to The Netherlands and began your masters at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. When did you first come across The Hague school, and what were your early impressions of the institution that drew you towards it?

It was Lam Lai – she went to The Hague and studied there first from our department, and then it was a case of a person telling another person and then them telling another person, etc. Another thing with studying in The Hague was that we didn’t have to do any foreign language tests… -laughs- And that’s a big bonus for us, because we only know English to get in touch with the Western world. And what she [Lam Lai] mentioned to our colleagues seems like that The Hague actively encouraged you to do whatever you want, and it sounded to me like a free space to develop your creativity. 

So I went to The Hague and it matched what I expected to be honest. When I was composing [my] first piece in The Hague and I talked to [my teacher] Guus Janssen, I thought this teacher [was] completely different from my previous teachers. Guus was kind of playful and very open minded, very encouraging. He respected your preferences, instead of judging your aesthetic and pushing you to go forward to follow theirs.

And when you were there, what were some of the surprises? And was there anything that galvanised or shifted your perspective on contemporary music? 

After I had been studying for a while and taking different lessons like music philosophy, and Yannis [Kyriakides]’ class in multimedia – it was eye opening for me to know that it’s not only the 20th century aesthetic that exists right now. A lot of people are doing lots of cool stuff with multimedia, and cross-media synchronicity – that gives another perspective on the diegetic way to express a concept. I feel like it was really eye opening.

I also think because of the community as well [in The Hague]. In Hong Kong, even though we were a little department, you always felt there was judgement from each other – and in The Hague, it’s like the crowd would not have judged you at all. The audience [in The Netherlands] were also very open. You genuinely felt like this circle was very healthy, because people are not thinking about competing with each other; it’s more listening to each other and encouraging each other to come up with different ideas. To think about it now, it was quite a relief when I went to The Hague and studied. I felt like this is a really good place to finally feel safe and be listened to, and be encouraged by the teachers, student colleagues and the audience. In Hong Kong, the audience, even laymen… They had zero interest in contemporary music, literally no one cared. But in The Netherlands there were some elderly people, there were some young people… It was a whole cultural thing. They were more open and willing to get to know something that they are not familiar with. In Hong Kong, it’s a tough crowd. -laughs- But it’s getting a bit better now.

I remember in the year that we studied together that you got quite keen on wanting to explore installations. Could you talk me through what attracted you to working on installations?

I felt like I wanted to approach sound installation after I finished writing a string quartet – ‘Bridge Over’ – for Azalaïs Quartet. After that experience, I felt like I had reached the maximum [of writing concert music] and I really needed something more to express my ideas.

In 2019, the political movement [in Hong Kong] came out – the protests and everything that happened during that period of time – and it happened [while I was] preparing for my graduation. So I felt like I wanted to talk about how I personally felt after experiencing the very diverse and dramatic experience in Hong Kong – where you are seeing people blocking each other out, on Facebook, cutting off relationships, etc. I got off on a misunderstanding with a friend of five years; he misunderstood me over a discussion and he cut me off completely, so the five year friendship was gone like that. And I felt traumatised, because I value friendship a lot. After that experience, I reflected a lot about how we as individuals should react to society, and the relationship between one[self] and society – all of that introspection.

So I created a piece called ‘Collective Loner’. It’s an installation for one person to experience. It plays with the materials of looking outside while you are in an intimate space, and being seen as well. It is an interactive experience for spectators; it’s a huge part of the piece, since it is also a choice that we made to see or be seen in a social context.

Would you say compared to writing concert music, that there’s like an element of liberation in terms of dealing with the pacing of musical material? 

I wanted the piece to explore reflective and reflexive themes, which I think is necessary. Because otherwise, I can just put this idea in a durational piece of music with a certain time limit – and it doesn’t work because the concept isn’t communicated. So that’s why [I started] to explore more on the multimedia side, because my ideas need more media to support it. Until now, I still do this approach because I feel like only doing sound research and being very abstract doesn’t resonate to me anymore personally. I really need to know exactly what I want to convey in a concept, and how that can also relate to another human being. 

So in a way, it gave you more room to make societal and biographical observations using multimedia?

Exactly! Also, for the installation that I did in 2022 [‘THE OTHER’] at Gaudeamus – it’s societal and psychological. I gave out surveys for each participant to fill in so that I could see their reaction and understand how they think. It was a really great experiment and research for me. 

And for that installation, could you please tell me about how Gaudeamus approached you and the ideas behind it and how the approaches that you took were different to your earlier explorations in installation? 

Martijn Buser gave me an opportunity to be [a] Ulysses Network artist – so this was one of the journeys that I was involved with. And I chose to do a sound installation; from what I had been researching [at the time], it had also been related to intimacy and also reflecting one’s role in society.

Compared to my graduation project, this new installation was also for one person to experience – and it’s also interactive in a way that it interacts with the next participant. There are some instructions that I asked them to do when they are wearing the headphones; they can choose in the UI two tracks to listen to (out of five), and I liked the participant to own their choices, because I wanted them to create their own experience. They would not be able to listen to every single track unless they revisited the installation again. And that’s also another strategy to make them come back again. -laughs- But there were some people who came to visit twice and they told me afterward that the whole experience was quite interesting. 

The installation was about creating the space to re-introspect and that installation is about a “perception jail.” It’s kind of inspired by Sartre’s No Exit; which talks about three characters torturing each other in a hell for them, where they all lived in their own perception and they all need the other person for validation – person A needs person B’s validation, person B needs person C’s validation, etc. – but they were never going to get it. I tried to think about how this relates to me and how we have been developing interpersonal relationships – friendships, lovers, family – and consider my future in this society. In this particular installation, it is mostly related to friendships – I’ve noticed that, at least for me, that when I want to talk to my friend, it’s because there’s a part of me that cannot see myself, it’s a blindspot. So I need to check with my friends from time to time if I am doing fine or whether this is ok, etc. – my friends are my mirror and I need them, and they need me too.

With this installation, I came up with his idea of a perceived jail; so I made the installation like a jail, all mirrors with some angles where you cannot see yourself. And the funny thing is that because the mirrors look so similar, there is no door – like, you cannot tell where the door is – so people were spending so much time trying to push the different mirrors to figure out which panel was the door. -laughs- That was a bonus for me.

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When you graduated from The Hague in 2020 and moved back to Hong Kong, what were some of the first musical activities that you did when you returned? 

I did some audiovisual work for a while. I was still exploring the multimedia path and I noticed that I sometimes will not be able to collaborate with visual artists due to budget limitations, so I also wanted to explore it myself. I was getting interested in visual learning and touch-designer stuff, so I worked on two pieces with those tools. Both pieces were cross-media, because for me, [sound] on its own is not enough anymore to convey a concept.

How has your approach to composing music changed since you’ve been back? You’ve mentioned to me before that you’ve been through a process of what you put as “escaping the academy”, so what aided you to disassociate from your academic approach?

During the pandemic, I noticed that there were a lot of jobs that cannot be done without seeing each other – so I was trying [and still am] to develop a way to sustain my living without needing to go out to see people. So I did film scoring. I could sit at home, look at the movie and write the music to go along with it. I just entered the commercial world, working with a boss, whom I learnt a lot from in a commercial perspective. And I think that is where the unlearning process began; starting in that period of time, I was personally not feeling very connected to the contemporary music community anymore, because I was trying to sustain my living with commercial work and that would attain more audiences. 

After doing some film scoring work, I wanted to try to do some pop songs – also because of a similar reason [to make film scores], to attain the audience for that. I still do receive some opportunities from contemporary groups and I think it’s great, because I can switch between doing commercial stuff and doing more “art” work, which I believe is beautiful. I enjoy doing that all at once. But I don’t feel that engaged [with the] contemporary concert music community anymore – I don’t actively go to contemporary concerts, and I don’t even search for new pieces that often anymore. Just from time to time I listen to my friends’ music who are working as composers or doing PhDs; they’re great, I am happy for them, but I don’t feel very engaged anymore. So I don’t feel like I’m “in” the scene, even though I’ve still got some chances to have my compositions performed live. 

Has there been any scene or type of music that you have been particularly fascinated with since you’ve moved back? 

I’ve become really interested in improvisation groups – for some reason, I just compare that with contemporary music concerts. I think it’s because the language is foreign anyway, you make any sound that can work in an improvisation group. 

The first time I participated in an improvisation group was actually in IRCAM, which was part of the Ulysses journey. It was joining the collaboratory workshops led by Bernhard Lang – who’s a really great tutor – and I met some wonderful sound artists as well, all of whom are really talented. I got really inspired after that experience. Because we [as composers] might be focusing too much on the craft for when we are composing, whilst with improvisation, there is something very performative and basic; like interactive elements that are very important within a performance that makes it feel alive. I like to use the term “alive” because that’s how I feel when I listen or participate in an improvisation. And that’s what I find interesting, because I don’t feel the same way when I listen to contemporary classical music most of the time. 

How have your experiences with improvisation and installations affected your views on ensemble music?

Last year, I participated at the Impuls New Music Festival in Graz, which was a big disappointment for me. A lot of works that they play, it’s contemporary in a sense that it’s “new” – they are still exploring new developments with instruments or in a temporal experience – but it doesn’t make me feel anything. And by “feeling”, I don’t mean that it needs to be an emotional connection or something, but I just don’t feel any fun. It’s very well-developed European composers leading the whole aesthetic and then we just admire what they have researched; but then it already has been done 20 to 50 years ago, and that’s their aesthetic. It feels a bit saturated in the scene already.

But on the other hand, I got more interested in improvisation; and I hope that I can get more opportunities to play around with different people and just meet new people through improvisation, which I find fun. With improvisation, it’s more like the creative process is very transparent, and is prioritising the communication and collaboration amongst the performers higher than how it eventually sounds to the audience. As an audience member, I still find it very convincing – like, I understand how it works this way – and you don’t judge about the sound or whether the whole structure is going to make sense. The interaction that you are seeing in real-time with the performers is the most captivating thing. 

In the last year you have started working on singer-songwriter material. Could you please tell me about the process of making music for that and how has it been different compared to your past work?

I can break this down into multiple aspects. First of all, with the collaboration with other performers, it’s actually quite a different dynamic. There’s a different kind of hierarchy, as it’s not a composer and performer relationship; we are bandmates, and we are mates. -laughs- The relationship matters a lot, because we don’t have some practices in unity. A lot of people do not have classical training and don’t know how to read scores as well, they just jam; they know how to play with feel[ing] and know how to engage with an audience – which is very important, as they can become famous from that. My training is really classical, so finding the balance of how to make my bandmates feel comfortable without me putting them into a situation like an actual hierarchy of composer and performers. 

When I write a song, I still write a score for it, and I give it to them with everything specified, because I don’t know what works… so I just try to do it that way, a very formal way. I’ve also tried writing down the chords and saying “Suit yourself, whatever works for you”; making them listen to a demo and then play along, telling them that if they want to improvise, they can try. Then we can discuss over it about which parts we can improvise and which parts need to stick with the arrangement.

Luckily, I am able to find really talented performers who are very versatile and have classical training. It is very difficult to find musicians in Hong Kong who know how to read music, have a great stage presence, and have good aural skills. -laughs- I have had trouble finding the appropriate bandmates. I know with my personality I am not a very easily workable person when it comes to creating stuff together, when it comes to doing music – I prioritise the aesthetic a lot, how the taste is.

Another aspect to this is the form of presentation. I’ve been preparing for another performance on the 20th [January], and I talked to the artistic director of the organisation in Hong Kong called Ear Up who gave me a lot of advice about how I should present myself. In a concert hall setting, you present your piece and then you bow because you are a composer only, and [afterwards] you just leave [the stage] and everyone claps their hands; whether they remember you, you don’t know. -laughs-

When it comes to performance in pop music, you really cannot put yourself in a backstage situation, even though you are the creator of the song; you need to put yourself as a performer, which is a completely different mindset to only being a composer. You have to think about how to engage with the audience, and almost need an alter ego to engage with the people who love your music. It’s totally different from real life. That is what I am struggling with at the moment – I haven’t developed an alter ego yet. So onstage I’m just quite rigid still (in my opinion )and I am trying to develop my stage presence. Because the audience matters a lot in the pop music scene – there’s basically a 50/50 ratio of importance when you are performing between the stage presence and how you are performing the music. 

With your songs like ‘邊緣舞 Edge of Dance’ for example, how much input do your band members have in terms of the arrangement?

I do most of the arrangements, it’s all by myself. But recently I’ve been doing a different approach, because I think they have very distinctive characteristics when they play their own instruments, and so I want them to stand out as well. I don’t want them to feel like they are playing in a session, like touring musicians who are just serving an artist. So I have been gradually involving them to have more input in the arrangements. There are multiple songs [where] I have morphed their input and made a band version, because some of my [early demo] arrangements are quite electronic.

Generally, I have been trying to change my approach as well – because I have realised that their own personalities [are] quite important too and I don’t want to waste their talents. I might spend more time with each of them, working on ideas, instead of being at home and arranging material for them to play.

Essentially, it’s like writing to a chamber group or even a soloist in particular, and you have access to working with them closely; you almost want to get to know them as a person a bit more to bring out another element of them. 

Exactly! One thing I wanted to mention was that when it comes to writing pop music: it’s all only relying on my intuition. Harmonically it’s based around chord progressions that I am feeling at the time, and how I would like to play around with that. I still have the same mindset from when I was composing concert music that I don’t want to do the same as what other people have been doing. But [with writing songs] it’s just a more approachable language to the general public; by using tonality again, adding different genres of arrangement in the songs, using familiar instruments like guitar, bass, drums etc. However, I do include things that I learnt from contemporary writing in school – like retrograding pitches, designing the song structure, introducing more unique/rare sound samples – and put that in the arrangement, and it works. -laughs-

I usually just have a solid idea, a very clear direction of how long I want the song to go on for, and then the lyrics will help a lot with conveying the stories. In terms of music and arrangement, it will be relatively less prioritised. When it comes to the human voice and the lyrics [in songwriting] they will come out on top.

Honestly, if I had not studied contemporary music for six years, then I wouldn’t be writing songs in the way that I do now. They would certainly be more cheesy, because I wouldn’t have that vision of knowing what the other possibilities of composing devices and concepts are. 

Would you say that these different hats have been an important development for you then in the last four years since you’ve graduated? Having these different practices and allowing them to bleed and blend into one? 

As an artist this is how I feel the freedom to create; I just love to compose through different approaches and methods. Through different genres and practices, I can meet different people. Even though it’s just the art and music industries, the backgrounds are so diverse – people might be doing architecture and suddenly be a DJ or a VJ, etc. Those kinds of people bring in a lot of different perspectives because they are not from a classical background, they did not study an arts degree, and they are not growing up as an artist; this brings me a lot of introspection.

About these multiple ways of conveying myself through different genres: I feel like through different disciplines of creating music and art, I can convey different parts of myself through different genres. For example, for my installation work, it doesn’t feel so emotional – it’s like carrying my reflection or my thoughts in a more rational way. It’s bringing my own concepts into it, but not necessarily having to be emotional or sensual – which compared to my songs, are more private in a way. 

For film scoring, that is good practice in writing techniques and orchestration, etc. and experimenting with different sounds; since film is a very visually-dominant art form, sound has relatively more space to experiment. I feel as though that the film industry is getting more open to electronics and they are not stuck in the John Williams era with traditional string writing. They love to see and hear new sounds that bring them a different perspective or impression; even to an ordinary story in a movie, they need more stimulation by audio, so they want experiments as well.

Could you say that overall you are creatively fulfilled in the sense that you can tap into these different things? You’ve talked about trying to develop an alter ego, but you’ve already got several alter egos in a way – you are a multi-dimensional artist who can tap into these different things at different times…

You’re right – that’s actually a lot of alter egos already and I didn’t notice that. That’s important to me, because being an artist, you need to shift your identity of being an audience member, a listener, a creator and a performer as well. So this is a good practice, and I really hope I can continue in this way.

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Learn more about Esther and her practice at:

• https://earupmusic.com/artists/estherwu/
• https://www.instagram.com/est.her.works/
• https://soundcloud.com/esther-wu-479018478

1. Not only Karen can be credited to these results, also Samson Young, Steve Hui, William Lane, Charles Kwong – they are quite major in contributing to the ‘new’ new music scene! ↩︎