News for Surrender: A T’ai Qi Cantata

Byron Au Yong, a Seattle composer whose work elegantly mingles folk elements with theatrical staging and an astute ear for the avant… defiantly dispels the fumbling tokenism of the ‘exotic’ that bedevils so many composers…. Several years ago at the Esoterics’ performance of Au Yong’s Tian Wen, I was enchanted by the slow movement of the singers who circulated around a church altar while chanting an irregular, yet soft, vocal line. It was meditative music without the mush and just a hint of muscle.

Christopher DeLaurenti, The Stranger, 11 August 2005

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Au Yong is a Seattle native with a wide and sturdy artistic grounding, who recently returned to the city. He first worshipped Bach and Chopin, but gradually switched – from piano to percussion, from reverence to questioning and from one cultural source to a melange.

Jen Graves, The News Tribune, 05 August 2005