I had the honor of being interviewed on "Culture Mosaic" on VTV4 about my new album Tri Âm, my collaboration with tremendous Vietnamese musicians, and our concert at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi.
Many thanks to Mai Anh Do for the wonderful interview! I look forward to more collaborations in the future.
The 10th Anniversary Culture Show at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi with Ngô Trà My, Phạm Trà My, and Trí Minh.
🎶🏛️ Last night's concert at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi was an experience that I’ll never forget! 🇺🇸🎻 I am still overwhelmed with gratitude and honor to have shared the stage with the incredibly talented artists Pham Tra My, Ngo Tra My, and Tri. The warmth and camaraderie that filled the air during our performance were beyond words.
Collaborating with these esteemed musicians was an absolute joy, and we poured our hearts and souls into every note we played. The harmonious blend of classic Vietnamese melodies, original compositions, and the soul-stirring sound of the cello, accompanied by traditional Vietnamese instruments and modern electronics, created an enchanting and immersive musical experience. 🎵🤝
Working with these artists not only allowed us to create captivating music but also forged a bond of friendship and understanding that goes beyond language and borders. Their talent and passion are inspiring, and I couldn't have asked for better people to share this experience with. I'm genuinely hopeful that this is just the beginning of our artistic journey together. 🤗🎻
Thank you to everyone who attended the show in person and online, your energy and welcoming smiles helped to uplift our musical spirits. Thank you to all the journalists, newspapers, and television networks for helping spread the joy to a greater audience. Thank you to the U.S. Embassy and its wonderful staff for putting on this concert and working tirelessly to make the event successful. Thank you to young, Kaia, for accompanying me with your stellar dancing. Most importantly, thank you to my lovely wife, Bui Tuyet Minh, who helped to coordinate this concert. Let's keep the music alive and continue to celebrate the richness of Vietnamese culture together! 🎉🎵🇻🇳
I am incredibly honored and humbled to make my return to Vietnam with a beautiful show at U.S. Embassy in Hanoi!
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the U.S. - Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership, please join me and my fantastically talented Vietnamese artist friends Ngô Trà My, Phạm Trà My and Tri Minh. The concert will feature music from my new album, Tri Âm, in which I reimagine Vietnamese music through the lens of the cello. I will collaborate with these accomplished artists to create a mesmerizing performance that combines my newly composed works for cello with traditional instruments such as Đàn Tranh and Đàn Bầu. The collaboration will go beyond boundaries as we engage in a profound musical conversation, blending the enchanting sounds of these beautiful instruments with captivating electronic musical elements.
Make sure to register at this link if you'd like to attend in person:
https://creatorapp.zohopublic.com/pashanoi/form/form-perma/Public_Event_Registration/MGWweqynpdwKUUdPgf0GxxHFkTdVJsAkeKMNTxKkzDz5kwnZsjZqznYVrY2q00f4gWb20zp5UrUOWaQMnZBuhXMg4phN4NNCe6ff?fbclid=IwAR0zcYf8-5qWxJZy5wsUSMJhdsNnKn7iF-PXWJpuQUJIDG5-ISgp6N_3U-M
The event will also be livestreamed!
After an unbelievable year of performing, composing, and collaborating in Vietnam, I have finally returned to my hometown of Teaneck, NJ. It’s bittersweet because I really did have an amazing experience abroad, but I’m also excited to be back and teaching my students, playing gigs, and composing more music.
I had so many performances in Vietnam that I’ll never forget. I played cello in a running stream of water while people danced and frolicked around me as my wife led a Dance/Movement Therapy workshop. Was I the only one wearing rain boots instead of being barefoot because I’m a curmudgeon? Of course I was. I had to take the cello on a rickety canoe across a river and then walk through the jungle to get there, too.
I collaborated numerous times with the superbly talented, Duyệt Thị Trang. Our cello and đàn tranh improvisational duo took us everywhere: the U.S. Embassy, a packed to the gills show at Heritage Space, and even the jungles of Vietnam.
I had the real pleasure and fortune to collaborate with Phan Y Ly and Eliott Malderez as well. We created the group, Mandala, which combined cello with đàn tranh, sào meo, and percussion. They became my really good friends and we’d often hang out and just improvise for hours. There were so many improvisations that I am super proud of. They came over on my birthday and surprised me (I was taking a nap and wasn’t exactly Mr. Friendly when I opened the door). I remember we improvised one song that really brought me to that next level, following which they made me eat a Vietnamese specialty called, Chân Gà Đông Tảo, which is a chicken foot that looks like it came from a chicken that was a professional bodybuilder.
I had some really beautiful solo performances in Vietnam as well. I played to packed houses at Vincom Center for Contemporary Arts and The Hanoi Social Club, where I got to debut some new compositions that I had written since being in Vietnam. After going to Trang An and taking a canoe around the staggeringly beautiful rock formations in the water, I was inspired to write a piece about it. There was something really mysterious about these geological structures that resonated with me.
I had the great fortune to be selected for two music residencies in collaboration with Lune Production and Phu Sa Lab. I met musicians from across Vietnam and got to make music with instruments I had never even seen or heard of before. A lot of them were custom made, one-of-a-kind instruments. These residences were really intensive, no days off, but the opportunity to create, explore, and make connections with these superb players was invaluable. I certainly will collaborate in the future with a lot of these musicians in some capacity.
I collaborated with my wife a bunch for her Dance/Movement Therapy workshops. I played for her workshops across the country, but the most powerful one for me was working with the Vietnamese soldiers from the American War. It was a small group, but the connection that we had was extremely powerful and made me quite thankful for the opportunity. I hope that my wife and I can expand upon this premise of working with soldiers (hopefully from both Vietnam and the USA) in order to help them heal from the war.
What I’m most excited about taking back the USA and expanding upon is my studies and compositions with the đàn bầu. I still have a lot to learn, but I feel like it’s going to become an integral part of my writing and hopefully performing as well. I busted out a small đàn bầu solo for the first time at a gig that my fellow residents and I played at this beachside restaurant in An Bang. As I grow more confident on the đàn bầu, I’ll definitely be working it into my live performances more. There’s a world of possibility with this instrument, especially the combination with cello.
Well it was truly an eye opening year in Vietnam and I’m very grateful for the opportunity. I’m back now at the Bryan Wilson Cello Studio in Teaneck, NJ and I’m getting ready to teach a bunch of new students, to record cello for artists across the globe, and to write some new pieces for cello and đàn bầu.
Today I had a really transformative experience. My wife, Bùi Tuyết Minh, is the founder of Vietnam Dance Movement Therapy and helped to lead a workshop at the American Center in Hanoi for Vietnamese veterans who are suffering from cancer.
When I first heard that she was doing this workshop and that I would be lending musical accompaniment, I was intrigued, albeit a little apprehensive. I have collaborated so many times with my wife in tons of workshops, but this one in particular stood out to me. It seemed heavy and dark, but very important.
Here’s me, some American kid who had an easy life and grew up with very little connection to Vietnam or the Vietnam War. I knew my grandparents, father, and mother were against the war back in the day and that my dad once got arrested for throwing snowballs at cops at an antiwar protest while he was in college. The legend is that the cops shaved his head in jail and it never grew back.
Now my connection to Vietnam is much, much stronger as my wife is Vietnamese and daughter is both Vietnamese and American. I’ve lived in Vietnam for almost a year now and have learned about the rich cultural heritage of this country. In the USA, all I really knew of Vietnam was the war: seeing movies and reading books all from the American perspective. Though the Vietnam War was certainly not the defining factor of people and culture in Vietnam, it definitely was an extremely significant and traumatic event that has shaped lives of everyone in this country in some way.
The workshop began with the veterans and their wives talking about how they were affected by the war: what they did before, during, and after. Some were teachers, some were doctors, all called to fight and all profoundly affected by their time as soldiers. All of the conversation was in Vietnamese and though my Vietnamese has gotten better over the last year, I didn’t understand most of the words they were saying. Honestly, I didn’t really need to understand the words as I could understand the feeling, emotion, and pain in how they were talking.
It’s funny, as someone who plays a very emotionally charged instrument and likes it for that fact, I really don’t like to talk about how I feel. After everyone had told their story at the beginning, Minh asked me if I wanted to say something. I really didn’t want to talk. I can be a good speaker and writer if I want to, but I just felt like it was so much easier in this situation to say what I wanted to say by playing. I played, Tinh Cha, a song for Vietnamese fathers and Minh began to facilitate the movements of the workshop.
You could see on their faces that the combination of the music and movement was really affecting them. It was quite powerful. Here was this music from their past, songs that they know and loved, recontextualized through the lens of some American man playing the cello.
This might sound pretentious, but despite the songs being familiar, I think what they were responding to is the intention and energy that I was giving the music. What I was trying to convey was a sense of healing, empathy, and compassion through my playing. I was trying in some ways to apologize for the stupid and often cruel things that countries do in the name of war, when at the end of the day, no matter what side you’re on, you’re still humans. No matter what side you are on when you see the horrors of war you are still a human being and you are going to be profoundly affected by this experience. What really separates you from the enemy? A uniform? A language?
It’s like that Thomas Hardy poem, “The Man He Killed.” It’s from the point of view of a soldier who killed an “enemy soldier,” and about how perhaps if they had met under different circumstances, they would have been friends. They would have had a drink at a bar and laughed. People aren’t governments. Governments get people involved in these conflicts, but it’s the people who suffer.
As I continued to play I could see the healing quality of what Minh and I were doing. I have to be honest, most times when I’m playing, I play for myself. The fact that people are sometimes deeply affected by my playing isn’t really my goal. I play because I enjoy playing and everything else that happens as a result is nice, but not my focus.
This was different. I wanted the audience to be touched in a positive way. I wanted them to see that though they may have seen some terrible things and now they are fighting for their lives from diseases inflicted by chemicals from the war, that every darkness has a light. Forty-four years after the end of the war I bet these men were not expecting to be at the American Center in Hanoi being played Vietnamese songs by an American cellist and being led in a dance workshop by his Vietnamese wife.
At the end of the session, the soldiers and their wives were very thankful for providing the workshop. I was thankful to them for giving me a chance and for sharing their deeply personal stories with us. I know I grew as a person, an artist, and human being. I hope I helped to give them some sort of relief and peace.
In an endlessly complicated and often scary world, never underestimate the healing power of music, dance, and the human connection. These are some of the few things that really matter in this world.
I was very humbled and honored to be featured on TV in Vietnam! I performed with the master of the đàn tranh, Duyệt Thị Trang, at the American Center in Hanoi, Vietnam. The program was a stunning improvisational collaboration between cello and đàn tranh, an instrumental duo that has had very little interaction historically.
Thay and I improvised together and answered questions from the audience regarding our musical journey together. We were also joined by the talented musical duo of Ly Phan and Eliott Malderez who helped to add extra color and depth to our improvisations. Enjoy the video, I had a great time performing and doing the interview!
