We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Moon Han. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Moon below.
Moon, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
Death made me a composer of music. At 9 years old, the weight of understanding death came from witnessing my elder brother’s life taken by a reckless driver. Chinese culture forbids the mere mention of “death” as inauspicious, filling me with loud, unspoken loneliness and unseen pain. This ubiquitous grief, which almost killed me, was a constant, haunting presence sealed in silence. Each note of my first piano composition became a bridge to my brother: a sonic transformation where our souls entwined, a requiem where longing found solace and loneliness met healing. Layers of emotions surged through my fingers, dancing freely across the ivory, channeling from the depths of my being, a buried and bursting torrent.
I belong to the Buyi ethnic minority from the remote village of Anshun Tunpu, a community living in harmony with nature since 1368. Our traditional way of life, centered around farming and weaving, blessed me with a rich spiritual heritage that honors harmony between nature and humanity, nurturing my exploration of an arts-led approach that fosters healing, love, and inner stillness. Today, I am a 29-year-old, award-winning music composer with a professional background in sociology, yet beneath this surface lies the soul of a sensitive 9-year-old carrying the weight of loss. This grief, coming in waves, still unearths a series of questions. How do we face death, those cruel departures that leave us with an unfillable void? How do we, who have faced the unforeseen forces of death, heal from the pain of loss? How does healing come to those striving to survive? Across the world, grieving humans suffer in separation, longing but lacking the embrace of communal warmth. This profound sense of isolation and the urge to break it propelled my unique interdisciplinary journey from seeking self-healing to creating healing for all suffering.
I believe an artist’s role is akin to a healer’s: to illuminate the invisible, to listen, to inspire, and to support healing. My vision is to be a sociologically engaging composer-scholar who researches, reflects, and responds to world events through public platforms and persistent artistry. I envision a series of music meditation retreats, creative art-filled concerts, sound sculpting installations, and interdisciplinary conversations permeated by live audiovisual experiences, all in vibrant collaborations with like-minded musicians, designers, scholars, and pioneers—undertaking a venture for the welfare of all human beings.
Music has always been the healing magic I hold on to during my most vulnerable time of loss. I have always wanted to deliver this healing magic to whoever strives to survive through life’s sorrows, seeking healing and inner stillness.
Moon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My professional musical pursuit magically started in the summer of 2017, landing in Boston alone with an original piano composition, “Wrap Me in Your Wings.” I received a four-year scholarship to study Jazz Composition at Berklee College of Music. On March 21st, 2025, I received an offer from the University of Oxford to continue an MPhil degree (the first two years of scholarly training towards a Ph.D.) in music composition.
I look forward to foraying into the world of classical and new, experimental music composition as a jazz composer with a traditional Eastern musical heritage, expanding the edges of different music genres. I believe that music itself transcends labels and definitions. I see the essence of jazz improvisation as akin to the fluidity of sampling sound narratives—both are flexible, refreshing, and fascinating.
My vision for the future of music composition invites all composers and non-composers to create freely, allowing our inner voices to sing in a shared, encouraging environment to connect and collaborate. With this faith rooted deeply in my heart, I embrace all the excitement and challenges with gratitude and grace in life as I flow and grow in music.
I can never express enough gratitude to my beautiful, beloved Berklee Jazz Composition community, from which my music dream was given the first chance to start, grow, and shine.
I will never forget the late summer night in 2017 when I first heard a live Jazz show at Berklee’s Performance Center(BPC). It was such a life-changing live concert to me; that was the moment, as a listener, I fell in love with Jazz — as if I had loved it during multiple of my past lives but firstly recognized it thoroughly with my soul for the first time, (growing up in an ancient, remote, and underdeveloped village in Southwestern China, Jazz is far, far away from my ears daily sensory, touchable listening sources.
I remember how surrendered to the spirit of swing; I told myself,
“This is the music I want to create as a composer, the flowing freedom, the expressive emotions … this is what I will do with my hands in my lifetime.”
Now, six years have passed since that summer night, and I have completed my Bachelor’s (with Honors) in Jazz Composition and Master’s in Creative Media and Technology at Berklee NYC. Throughout, I have honed a rich and deep cross-cultural artistry of musical hybridity. Sensations of rootlessness find resonance with my ancient, natural roots as I blend the richness of Eastern instrumental elements into the depth of Western jazz and chamber music, tempered by both Chinese and American cultures.
Leading the international jazz band “Tune into Moon,” I have shared my dynamic fusion artworks through music, art, and multimedia collaborations with artists worldwide. Receiving the 2023 ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award is a testament to my lifelong passion for transcending the boundaries of culture, gender, language, and age. I am now fully prepared and ready to dig deep into the rich music culture that Oxford will nourish me as I strengthen my craftsmanship in classical music composition with the same patience and passion I have for Jazz.
With CanvasRebel, I want to share a bittersweet love story behind my ASCAP Foundation award-winning chamber jazz composition, “Seeds You Planted in My Soul.” (Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0jvtY3vnQ1vF1gXQL5ZbtQ?si=L1h0swuuRDaBX-TiqC-_5g). It is a chamber jazz song written about a love that was lost in life, but to me, it lasts for a lifetime: How did we say goodbye to someone we cannot imagine living without? I didn’t say goodbye; I didn’t say anything … Instead, the pain and pity had transformed into this one-and-only piece after life had split our shared paths for more than 10 years.
“Seeds You Planted in My Soul” was written at the age of 27, to my first love (I will call him F here) at the tenderest age of 17. F was my first listener; through countless phone calls, I carefully placed my phone next to the piano, knowing the boy I loved was on the other side. F always told me, “Moon, you should do music; you will compose a beautiful life through your fingers.” His magical words have been carried within me days and nights as I flow in music and art in my search for life’s meaning. Looking back at the sweetest summer of seventeen, in tears and tenderness, I wrote this once-in-a-lifetime love song to this once-in-a-lifetime love that has existed, nourished, and inspired me deeply. Even though it was not a love that eventually landed in reality, it was such a love that made me who I am musically and spiritually.
Magically, this love song I wrote for my first love was rewarded by the ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Jazz Composer Award in 2023. Ten years after the first love story ended, however, the love we didn’t end up landing in reality was turned into another form of recognition and blooming in another way. Music is where I store the beautiful souls I’ve loved and lost, where I revisit faded memories as if encountering them for the first time, where I awaken my listeners to their old, sweet loves and losses, and remind them how the past has shaped who they are in life. To F, someone who will forever hold a sacred place in my music and heart. I sincerely hope this real and bittersweet first love story will be heard by more people with shared experiences.
As humans, we love, lose, and grow with grief. I sincerely hope this love song delivers a beautiful, resonating, and complex awareness to everyone who loved, lost, and received the gift that past love rewarded in some other ways in life.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My compassionate commitment to serving humanity blossomed from 2015 to 2017, during which I volunteered as a music therapy session pianist and teaching assistant at the Hangzhou Morning Star Autistic Children Hospital. Immersed in service, observation, and hands-on practice, I took my field research a step further by visiting the homes of 26 families affected by autism. Utilizing my communication skills, I delved deep into the external and internal obstacles they faced from a sociological perspective. These intimate interviews, each a personal connection, laid the groundwork for my research paper, ‘The Dilemma and Research in Autistic Families in Hangzhou City,’ which significantly catalyzed the city government to pass legislation in 2019 that offered yearly financial aid to families with autistic children aged 3 to 7—an essential yet long-overdue advancement in enhancing local social welfare.
This legislative change tangibly increased public welfare and the lives of many Chinese families affected by autism. Unfortunately, a single mother of a 4-year-old autistic child, my first interviewee, did not live to witness this change. Her suicide two years prior left a hefty void in my heart, a sudden loss nearly as painful as the passing of my brother despite our lack of blood bonds.
Once again, death steered me back to music—my soul’s solace during times of mourning. Initially, music composition was a self-built bridge connecting my brother in spirit. This tragedy, coming at a developmentally more mature time, awakened my realization about the common yet vast suffering of intimate death spreading its pain across our shared human experience. In facing the pain of loss, restoration is essential for healers and those needing healing. In my music and life, I strive to invite all to converge, belong, and commune to support and uplift one another in our most vulnerable times.
On July 21, 2024, “I Have Found the Prettiest Rose: A Live Meditative Piano Serenade Composed & Crafted by Moon Han” was held at the heart of Sakura Park in Manhattan, New York. This calming, meditative concert, born of love, felt like an intimate conversation with an old friend, flowing from my fingers, seeking to heal the pain of loss for all. My grandmother’s passing in March and my aunt and cousin’s in April made it a bittersweet farewell to these beautiful, beloved roses in my family and anyone searching for inner peace with its gentle musical touch and the joint nature of birds’ singing.
Guided by my narrative voice and storytelling, guests gathered in a circle, sitting on the grass with closed eyes, breathing in and out…accompanied by my jazz composition and improvisation, each piece, interwoven with poetry, transported the attendees from the earth beneath to the stars above, where our departed loved ones shine. This meditative serenade, lasting unexpectedly 5 hours until midnight, became a shared solace, bridging each listener to the inner sanctuary of their most treasured memories.
As the concert concluded, I invited the audience to write a love letter to death—whether marking the end of a romantic relationship, a missed opportunity, the departure of a cherished soul, or even the final breath of their own. An old man, introducing himself as Pablo, approached me and said, “Thank you. Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of my son’s death. My wife and I were anxious about facing it, but we walked to the park tonight and joined your concert. It truly felt like my son guided us here.”
His words transported me back to the tearful eyes of that single mother who took her own life in 2017. At the end of our interview, she spoke in an almost pleading tone, expressing gratitude for my willingness to listen, as she had not shared her struggles with anyone for so long. Suddenly, chills ran through me as I realized why my life had led me here—navigating the interdisciplinary realms of Sociology, Jazz and Classical Composition, Visual Art, and Multimedia Technology. Each step through the sands of time, experiencing life’s joys and sorrows, has been to fulfill my soul’s mission—being and becoming an active composer-artist driven by a solid, sociological commitment to serving humanity.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Knowing that I create a shared sacred place for people who happens to encounter my music and story, and to taste their owns in my music.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.moonhan.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musicmoonsita?igsh=ejV6YzBzNnB6YW4x
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1BPLLCCdzg/
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/moon-han-composer-producer-designer
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5hTjq7dZ6L5uQe9sHBmOp4?si=fgjUQHm_Qv6OK3REr2SzNg
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/moonsita-h/1563601785
