Reflection on Shi-An Costello’s Performance

After that summer, Shi-An and I stayed in touch even as he went off to grad school in Canada. He sent me things he wrote and I admired them all. I admired his music so much that I asked him to write me a piece for one of my doctoral harpsichord recitals. He came down to visit me in Ann Arbor and I basically locked him in a room with a harpsichord. A few hours later he came out with a piece called For Harpsichord. 

All to say that I am a huge Shi-An fan and that I pretty much support everything he does. Then last year or maybe two years ago, I saw Shi-An in Chicago and he told me he was working on a piece using the “Asian riff.” He told me he wanted to reclaim the oriental fantasy, which was a whole genre of composition during the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth that exoticized and otherized Asian culture, and in that process reclaim the Asian riff. I was horrified. I thought it was the worst idea ever. How could this work? He was basically using the musical equivalent of a racial slur as the entire basis of a composition. It made me uneasy, to say the least. I think I told him as much. A few months later, he told me he had finished the piece and that he was calling it “the orient.”

Shi-An sent me a recording of the premiere in April of last year. I didn’t listen to it. I was scared to listen to it. So, I put it off. I ignored the message and skirted around the topic of the piece when we talked. Until one day in July, I was overwhelmed by guilt (I’m mostly motivated by guilt) and decided to take the plunge. I put my headphones on, turned on the recording, and went for a walk.

From the opening, I was hooked. Listening to a great piece of music is like watching a great movie or reading a great book. You’re immersed in a world and you want to know what happens next. “The orient” reeled me in, and for forty minutes I was lost in a world of poppy fields, trains, violent attacks, national ambiguities. Some of it was very beautiful–the opening meditation on the Asian riff. Some of it was disturbing–I still cringe at the first full statement of the Asian riff presented in all its racist glory–and some of it was profoundly sad–the killing of Vincent Chin. By the end of the last movement with its beautiful “national anthem” without a nation, I found myself walking down Penny Lane crying. A piece hadn’t moved me like that in years. I felt like Shi-An had shared a profound message about Asian American history and identity, but it was also deeply personal. He had shared more about himself than anything else. At the same time, I felt like the piece somehow spoke about my experience as an Asian American. It was like the first time I saw an Asian actor in a movie. There’s someone who looks like me. 

I knew I wanted to bring Shi-An to Chatham Hall after that. The piece was too important, too beautiful for us not to hear it live. The message was too important and too beautiful for us not to experience it together. 

The piece was more powerful live. It moved me to tears again. I was glad that Chatham Hall got to hear it and I was even more glad that Chatham Hall gave Shi-An such a warm welcome. If anything else, I hope you check out Shi-An’s work. His website shiancostello.com has many recordings of his music, and his albums are available on Spotify and iTunes. But more than that, I hope this experience opened you up to listening outside of your comfort zones. There’s so much great music out there, in all genres, written by so many great people that will let you experience the world through different people’s ears. Go listen.