We were lucky to catch up with Melissa Wang recently and have shared our conversation below.
Melissa, appreciate you joining us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
I’m going through my 1/3.5 life crisis, as opposed to my mid-life crisis which will meet me later. When I picture myself working anywhere besides teaching, performing, and composing music, I pull my brain to its interrogation room and ask my persistent 1/3.5 life crisis questions. In another field, will I make more money? Most definitely. In another field, will I get to leave my work the minute I leave the building? Probably. In another field, will I be satisfied?
Pursuing a music career is not easy, and every mentor and teacher has warned us from the get-go. But I am constantly reminded that a life with music at my forefront will bring joy to me and those around me.
My last percussion recital at Northern Illinois University was when I realized it’s not just about me and my feelings when I perform music. It’s about the people and the emotions, ideas, and community the music brings together. In the moment, it’s easy to selfishly think the music I perform serves only myself because I am spotlighted on the stage, but it’s about the composers, the musicians, the collaborators, the performers, the friends, the strangers, the colleagues, the teachers, and the meaning the music teaches, moves, and brings them. I want to provide joy, reflection, and inspiration to strangers and friends alike, and performing, composing, and teaching music is my way of doing so.
When my brain’s interrogation room tries to knock me down with its insistent questions, I think about the happiness music has and will continue to bring to me and the people I reach.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am a composer, educator, and percussionist, currently based in the Chicago metropolitan area. I teach percussion and steelpan at Waubonsee Community College, piano and drum set at Edge Music Academy, and general music at the Prairie School of DuPage.
Before I attended the College of DuPage, a community college in Illinois, I was ready to drop music once and for all and never touch an instrument again. This mindset was instilled in me because my sister and I finished participating in an intense music organization that folded when exposed online for allegations of abuse. A week before classes started, my mom, my sister, and I visited the college to find out where our classes were, and even though we signed up for no music classes, we decided to visit the McAninch Arts Center on campus. There, we met Ben Wahlund, the percussion instructor at College of DuPage, who I now consider to be a close mentor since then. We had a lovely conversation about music and he convinced us to join the CoD Percussion Ensemble and sign up for the Music Theory courses. Ben changed my view on music and percussion, and I am forever grateful for giving another chance in music and accidentally running into Ben.
Thanks to the start of my music career and the wonderful professors at the College of DuPage, there are so many experiences I am proud of. These experiences include presenting my performance web series, “Percussion Works by Women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+”, which would not have been possible without the support of Northern Illinois University’s Research, Engagement and Academic Diversity Grant; receiving first place in the 2019 Jack Stone Award for New Music with my winning piece “Downright Up and Left,” performed by Line Upon Line Percussion Ensemble; watching the diligent work to perform my pieces from Platypus Ensemble, Seattle Modern Orchestra, the University of Washington Symphonic Band, and the University of Washington Modern Music Ensemble; performing in the Percussive Arts Society International Convention at their 2024 New Music Research session, “Drum Set Beyond Its Roots”; and performing with Inverted Space in the 2023 Journey to the Black Lodge Tour.
My accomplishments stem from my interests in music. These interests include writing, performing, and instructing modern music works that involve choreography, theatrics, comedy, speaking or text, found sounds, and improvisation, influencing my interest in theatrical and speaking percussion. My recent work “The Prize of Nothing” performed by Platypus Ensemble demonstrates the joys in writing music with text, theatrics, and the refreshing comedic elements usually not featured in modern music. Additionally, I study and perform scores influenced by Global Folk traditions such as works by Gabriela Lena Frank and Andy Akiho, which encourage me to consistently explore how percussion is incorporated and transcended throughout different cultures. In this day and age, I am fortunate to be surrounded and influenced by many successful women and people of color in music and my interests lie in studying their music, such as Wang Lu and Kate Soper. I believe it is important to focus not only on written works but also on indeterminate works in graphic scores and text scores, such as works by Pauline Oliveros and George Lewis. Although my interests are varied, they all relate to my passion for music and the arts.
In my music career, I have three foci: performance, composition, and education. With performing, my mission is to bring forth the voices of marginalized voices. With music composition, my mission is to expand the repertoire of underrepresented percussion instruments, indeterminate works, and theatrical percussion. With teaching, my mission is to connect the community through lively collaborations and ensembles such as the steel band, the percussion ensemble, and the general music classroom. I strive to continue fulfilling my missions, pursuing my interests, and inspiring communities through music.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
As a musician teaching, performing, and composing, you are locked in your practice room hours a day, you are not paid enough, and you are working outside of your paid hours. Especially if you are a student or instructor in a music school, the “grind” is glorified and encouraged. The amount of work we are asked to do drives us to lock ourselves inside only focusing on our music work, with no time for the world outside of music. I told myself, “It’s better to regret doing something rather than to regret not doing something,” which spiraled me to a tunnel vision with my only focus being practicing music for hours on end and submitting as many music composition festival applications as I possibly could.
The burnout is real. The mental health crisis is real. The lack of attention to self-care is real. It’s too easy to be drained of energy for the art you love. I used to feel like my mental health was the sacrificial lamb in exchange for the work I do and the love I have for music. Even now, my already hard-working brain and thoughts attack me when I am not constantly productive.
But I am incredibly fortunate to have met Rose Martin, my colleague in percussion at the University of Washington, and Dr. Bonnie Whiting, my percussion professor at UW. They influenced me to reconsider my work-life balance, they taught me calming and meditative techniques, and they made sure we ate healthily, among many more. Rose and Bonnie helped me realize that life is not all about having every waking hour focused on music.
Additionally, Ben Wahlund, my mentor, once told me his wife comes first before his music. It is frequent that you are asked to ditch familial duties to attend to your music career. The need to put your loved ones first is the type of person I strive to be.
The resources to aid in your mental health may be obvious: a healthy diet, hydration, a healthy work-life balance, and exercise (and as a percussionist, I’m still deciding whether it counts as an exercise to run around your setup and do the grunt work on creating your setup). But the realization that you do not have to live a life flooded with music work is something I wish I had known earlier. I could’ve had the same drive to music and accomplished the same amount, while also caring for myself. The same motivation and rigor I have for my passion in music and my care for my self is possible, but it is so easily neglected. The importance of mental health is not clear until you grow older and start feeling the side effects of being regularly overworked.
Take care of your health now and forever. Be present for yourself, your family (if you’re cool with them), your friends, your teachers, and your colleagues. The best resource for your mental health is serving yourself and what your body needs. Your self comes first, and your art comes second. As clichéd as it is, if you are not at your best self, you cannot create your best art.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the feedback from my compositions, performances, and teaching. I enjoy hearing the audience’s thoughts and reflections, experiencing the accomplishments of my students’ hard work, and finding the sparks in the listeners’ eyes from their curiosity and questions. I recently directed my first concert at the Prairie School of DuPage, and it is rewarding to see how the music drives my students’ excitement and motivation from their accomplishments and learnings, to hear the parents’ reactions to the concert and their feedback of the music classes, and to be part of something that connects the community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://melissawangmusic.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissawangdoesmusic/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MelissaWangDoesMusic
Image Credits
Luis Orozco, @oroluis2 on Instagram
University of Washington, Meany Center for the Performing Arts
@yoyos.photos on Instagram
Noel Streaker and Yvon Streaker from Two Fourths Media
(no credit needed)
(no credit needed)
@yoyos.photos on Instagram
Photo by Percussive Arts Society PASIC 2024
University of Washington, Meany Center for the Performing Arts