Courage and Acceptance

My first doctoral recital was centered on the words: hope and courage. I think this time around, it’s courage and acceptance.  It’s a personal, vulnerable deep-dive into some of my own darkest moments, and a testament to my growth from acknowledging those pasts.  This concert is about life and death. The dualities. Of suffering and hope. Grief and joy. The extraordinary intensity and dignity of the human pathos, transfused with pain. Courage. And acceptance. The demons that come back. The cyclical nature of pain and grief.”

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Tong WangComment
Be okay with where you are.

Dear my musicians colleagues, thank you for what you do.

Dear all the audiences, whether you came especially to support me or were just passing through and by some miraculous coincidence crossed paths with the music I humbly earnestly adore, revere, serve - thank you for listening. For connecting. For sharing your energy.

It does matter. Little huge moments. Simply bringing music of the highest calibre I can, on this day, to these public spaces. I’m so glad. I feel a part of the beautiful work that all my fellow artists do. To be me, also to be no one. Anonymous. Just music. Just one with the composers who wrote these pieces, and everyone else who has ever played, listened to, loved these notes.

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Tong WangComment
"It's Another Day."

“A lot has happened.” As they say. I haven’t posted here since January, but I have been writing, everyday. I have been discovering all kinds of astonishing challenges, contradictions, blessings. I have grown. I have stalled. I have fulfilled all kinds of promises. Perhaps broken some, forgotten a few. Still learning. Still laughing-crying-derping. Eating cooking baking delicious things. Making music. Ya know.

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Tong WangComment
抓紧时间。 “Grab Tightly Time.”

There’s a Chinese mantra that’s been engrained in me since childhood. 抓紧时间. “Grab Tightly Time.” It taught me discipline. Efficiency. Intentionality. It’s a constant voice in my ear to move, to excel, to get shit done. Make dreams happen. 

And it has. 

But I don’t know if I think about Time in this way anymore. 

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Tong WangComment
About Time - 2023 in review

That’s extraordinary. Doing ordinary things in extraordinary ways. But, it’s not even about the doing. It’s actually true. What we all know, and say, again again, yet still need to believe, remember, and then - practice. It’s about the in between. While doing what we love, being what we love, being with love - to let the verb of that loving, giving, receiving, noticing - let that infuse all the spaces within and around us, spaces that we often can’t even name or capture or grasp. But it’s there. Little moments. Little moments in the process, the margins.

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Tong WangComment