ngủ ngon

In Vietnamese, ngủ ngon means “good night” or “sleep well.”Every time I hear those words, I am reminded of the haunting Vietnamese lullabies sung to me as a child, which inform the sound world of this piece. I am currently grappling with subjects of joy and grief and examining what it means to compose on either subject. The sound of the two instruments used, đàn bầu and đàn tranh, fittingly elicit emotions of nostalgia, care, and melancholy for me. Growing up listening to so much Vietnamese music through my mother’s bootleg CDs’, this piece is somewhat of a love letter to my childhood, of what was and what should have been. I derive the movement titles from lines of poetry that resonate with the themes I am exploring. The first movement title—“i don't know how to speak tenderness in my first language”—comes from Kimberly Nguyen’s poem (and coincidentally has the same title) “ngủ ngon.” The second movement—“you can't sleep except by forgetting, you can't love except by remembering”—is borrowed from Li-Young Lee’s “Restless.”

This concerto as it stands is not complete; I plan to write two more movements for Vân-Ánh Võ , the soloist who is premiering this work.

—Oswald Huỳnh