Lei Liang

Oceanic Migrants

Subtitle	for open instrumentation with fixed media
Technical requirements	Audio files and projector image files are available upon request from the publisher.
Year(s) composed	2025
Publisher	Schott Music
Premiere	October 11, 2025; CAL Performances in Zellerbach Hall; Berkeley, California Kronos Quartet • Wu Man, pipa
Commission	Commissioned for the Kronos Quartet and Wu Man by the ProtoStar Group
Composer note	Humpback whales have been singing in the ocean for perhaps over a million years. Humans were not aware of their evocative music until the 1950s. Using hydrophones placed on the seafloor, our collaborators captured a continuous 14-hour performance of a humpback as it passed through the Southern California Bight, offshore island province. When the whales come together, they converse in aggregate, as in a chamber music performance. In fact, the ocean is their concert hall. The song in this recording was captured at a site 1,300 meters deep, where it takes about two seconds for the sound to travel to the seafloor and make a round trip over this distance. That determines the length of the echo, which seems to set the pacing and tempo of the whale’s singing, as the ocean becomes its karaoke box. The humpback is dialoging with the ocean, and this composition is, in turn, my dialogue with them.