Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rain Hou. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Rain, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?
This semester, I took a piano literature class at Columbia University. In one of our weekly reading assignments, there was a quote by the wonderful pianist Busoni that immediately caught my attention: “Every piece of music is a reimagination of something that already exists.” I believe this phrase pretty much sums up my creative process, which is to steal from the best and to generate materials based on works from other artists that I genuinely love.
Whenever I need to write a new piece of music, the first thing I do is always sit down and listen to my favorite pieces (my most recent obsession is Unsuk Chin’s Gougalōn!). I first take screenshots of sound effects, extended techniques, and score notation that wowed me, and then see what I can incorporate into the existing music to make it my own. I love jazz, so I will always sneak in some jazz harmony and polyrhythm to give my music an exciting energy. As I brainstormed and built on these past musical creations, a moment of epiphany usually came soon after, spontaneously and organically, almost like magic. After the hardest part, which is to gather musical materials from scratch, the rest came in pretty handy.
Art is a conversational language. To create, I feel the need to be in constant conversation with other artistic voices to invite inspiration into my brain. It was difficult for me at first: Being a classically trained composer at a conservatory, naturally, there is a lot of pressure and talk regarding “finding your original voice.” Sometimes when I study and take inspiration from past masters, I think, am I truly being authentic to myself, if my music is a combination of other voices? But what I took away from this process is that I, as a human, as a person, am indeed a combination of endless other voices. Every day when I wake up in New York City, there is already a surge of voices from the streets. Each thing I hear, from the traffic, the rain pattering against my window, to the rats in the subway, can all affect the music I write today. Similarly, as a Chinese composer, the change in landscape changes my sound palette as well: When I was in Shanghai during summer, I noticed that my music took a drastic yet natural turn from hilariously whimsical to nostalgic. Therefore, to create, for me, is to accept all sorts of other voices into my body, not the other way around. Of course, there are always moments of insecurity, anxiety, and worry, but this true authenticity to myself is what kept me believing that I could succeed.
Rain, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Hi everyone, I’m Rain, and I’m a classical music composer and fiction writer. As a composer, I write classical music for chamber ensembles and symphonies; and as a fiction writer, my writings range from traditional non-fiction to crazy stories about a violinist who found a llamas in symphony hall, and two aliens who had a sapphic relationship in the basement of village vanguard. My creative works are usually featured by music festivals and music organizations: They can be found in ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Competition, Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival Quartet Composition, the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival 2024, etc. I guess what I’m most proud of is being 100% authentically me in my music. Feeding from my diverse tonal palette, my music is quirky, kaleidoscopic, and has a big personality. It is always telling a story that feels genuine and meaningful to me and my beloved ones. Growing up in a big Chinese city and constantly traveling between the U.S and my hometown, I’m constantly inspired by different landscapes. I have written works about the monsoon rainstorms in Shanghai, noises in New York City, and flickering street lamps.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
In the first semester I came to the Juilliard School of Music, I complained to my professor, Melinda Wagner, that I had kind of lost the ability to enjoy music. As soon as music became a profession for me, there was a sense of competition that is innate to an environment filled with composers, even if I didn’t want to. For instance, my favorite composer is Maurice Ravel, and I love listening to his symphonic works for fun. However, after getting into composition professionally, I couldn’t listen to him for a whole month, because it made me insecure thinking about how I could never write like him.
I sat down and had a long conversation with my professor after a while. One of the things she told me was the “love vs. fear mentality”. She said that as art creators, we should always create out of love, either when we write a piece of music for someone we love, or when we write because we just love writing. However, we can not create out of fear. The examples include when we write something because we want to gain someone’s approval, do not want to feel left out, or want to prove to ourselves that we can win over other composers. This conversation with my professor is the most valuable lesson that I learned in college, and it still helps me a lot to this day.
I realized that to be authentic to music, I have to unlearn “fear.” But it is difficult because fear is a passive response, and almost a primal instinct. And I’m sure everyone craves at least a little bit of approval from others when in moments of self-doubt. Confronting moments of fear is a long and gradual process for me. It is almost counterintuitive to the concept of institutionalized studies, because we are trained in a conservatory to succeed and earn as many prizes as we can, so that we can have a brighter future as musicians. The solution I found was rather simple and almost comical in a sense: I would just push myself to go to as many composition concerts as possible at school to absorb all sorts of wonderful creative voices. It was kind of a process of desensitization to tell myself that there are so many talented musicians out there, and no matter how great they are, they don’t take away how brilliant and unique my voice is. Me being me is more than enough, and I should be proud and grateful to be a part of the classical music traditions in the 21st century.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
It might sound like a cliche answer, but my number one goal is to always make my mother proud. Whenever someone asks me who my best friend is, I always answer: It’s my mother. I think having an empowering woman figure in my family is in itself the most important lesson I could learn from. When she was pregnant with me, she was working at a pharmaceutical company from 9 to 5, and going to a night school until 3 am to improve her English. Her resilience taught me to never settle for less, and always push myself to discover my full potential.
There are a lot of things that I respected my mother for doing, one of them being to let me come to America alone when I was 14. I think letting go of your child (I’m an only child too!) is one of the hardest things for an East Asian parent, or just a parent in general. She knew deep down that as soon as she watched me step on the flight to cross the ocean, we would no longer be standing on the same land, speaking the same language, or experiencing the same quotidian things. But she trusted me enough to let me decide to study music here and do what’s best for my music dream. She barely knew any music notes, but she can recite with ease all the pieces that I’ve written and all the competitions that I’ve won, in English. She is a very frugal person herself, but when it comes to my education, she always tells me not to worry about finances and to complete my degree, to pave the way for my future career. It is her support that pushed me to where I am today.
On top of all this, my mission is just to tell my story, and share an intimate piece of myself to the world and hope that my audience can resonate with it. :)
Contact Info:
- Website: still working on it!
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_rain_hou_/
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/rain-hou
Image Credits
my headshot is taken by https://www.instagram.com/studio_rainy_days/