One Year as a Teacher, Composer, and Computer Musician in Taiwan
Ever since I decided to become a composer, I’ve longed for the opportunity to spend a year abroad and immerse myself in a different culture. I believed that this experience would help me to better understand other cultures as well as my own creative voice. I am thankful that last spring I was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant to teach and research in Taiwan this academic year. I am also grateful that my home institute, Florida International University (FIU), graciously agreed to support my time abroad. I have adapted this article from the last of a series of four blog posts on my experiences in Taiwan and Asia that New Music Box, a leading English website that focuses on new music, commissioned me to write. You can read all of the four original posts here. * I have been regularly travelling to and learning about the new music scene in Taiwan since I met my wife Chen-Hui Jen nearly nine years ago. Over these years, I’ve been particularly struck by the myriad ways Taiwanese composers express their cultural identity in music and, as I mentioned in a post for New Music Box, by their compositions
