42 Days
2021
Debut album of Southeast of Rain
Experimental pipa/vocal duo with Sophia Shen
It started in the fall of 2019 in the Marin Headlands, a hilly peninsula located just north of San Francisco, when the two of us were fortunate to be Artists in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. For 42 days, we would wake up to the distinct rustling sound and cold scent of the eucalyptus forest gently softening the mornings of this former military base. We were ambitious, suddenly free from the distractions of wifi, cell reception and daily obligations, and setting out to create a single piece of music every day. But as with the nature of the creative journey itself, some days were less inspired than others, so we have named each composition after the day on which its idea arose…
“Weaving magic from the mundane” - Songlines Magazine
“A collaborative gem and a highlight among this year’s new releases... inspires a sort of breathless introspection–a meditation on the perception of time and space in sound.” - I Care If You Listen
Uuuiiiidededede
2017
Voice
Composed and performed by Lemon Guo
Solo version of Not Fog.
Performed at Works In Progress: Ecological Approaches in Thinking and Making (2017), Ambient Church (2018), NIME 2018 Charlottesville Collective Response Concert (2018), and Collaboration Across Borders (2017).
Me & Me & More
2013-15
Voice, field recording, electronics
These songs are my early experimentations at creating music, which is through songwriting and sound manipulation in my laptop. They also came out of a period when I was studying psychology. As a result, they explored similar ideas in different ways.
"Me & Me and More" is an electroacoustic song cycle that evokes themes such as real and imagined past, nature and ideas of nature, dream and reality, conscious and subconscious, and schizophrenia. I use my own voice as the core material, and construct a theatrical narrative with electronics and field recording.
Composed and performed by Lemon Guo, video by Mengtai Zhang, Projection Mapping by Eric Epstein, presented at Ambient Church, First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn Heights in 2018
Radio: Gwaith Sŵn's Sonic Darts, Resonance FM, London, 2018
Transplantation
2018
Teensy-modified Xiao with sensors and clarinet components, field recording, electronics
The work engages with the emotional, ethnographical, and political charge of material and place. Specifically, the piece explores music reconstruction and displacement in relation to a historical movement during postwar China (After 1949). Informed by personal experience, this work raises questions of systems of dissemination and cultural appropriation. Due to the call from the Chinese government, the idea of westernization while adhering to the national essence has caused an epistemic transformation of the musical practice, and lead to a movement of reconstructing folk instruments and music system, accommodating symphonic demands. Afterwards, this movement caused serious controversy and criticism. Although the war (organized massacre) has come to a temporary end, the combats on the cultural recognition and political ideology have never stopped. This composition is inspired by such historical and political issues, combined with acoustic Xiao, digital signal processing and sample triggering in Teensy, and expressing an imagination on the post-war cultural reconstruction. Overall, this work mirrors the wider idea of postcolonial identity, but explodes the expectations of a standardized sense of oriental aesthetics.
Composed by Lemon Guo
Instrument designed and performed by Mengtai Zhang
Performed at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2018), New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF 2018).
>19980
2017 - Present
Inaudible soundscape.
Inspired by a field recording trip with the EcoSono Institute to Alaska in 2013, I started working with the vocalization of orca whales, which can produce a much larger range of sound than human hearing range. The ultrasonic orca songs became the piece “into silence they appear”. The project then slowly unfolded into an ongoing exploration with the inaudible sounds from different environments.
Performed at International Computer Music Conference (2018, Korea), EcoSono Festival of Environmental Music and Sound Art (2017, Alaska), and Chronus Arts Center (2017, Shanghai). Published on Computer Music Journal (MIT Press) in 2018.
Arranged by Sophia Shen and Lemon Guo, performed by Savannah Thieme, Kristina Warren, Connie Zhenyue Huang, Moira Lennon, Pat Burns, Brian Roy, Steve Sun, John Xia, Yuning Ling, Carina Cai, Jining Zhong, Zishu Gao, Zexi Ye, Lily Ouyang, Sophia Shen, Yuchen Xie
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia
在那遥远的地方 In A Faraway Land
2015
SATB chorus, Chinese music ensemble
Wang Luobin, one of the most renowned Chinese songwriters and earliest ethnic music researchers wrote the song in 1939 in Qinghai Province while shooting a film near Qinghai Lake. He met a young Tibetan girl and wrote a song about the beautiful impression that she left upon him and all those around her. The song is set to the tune of a Kazakh folk song that Wang had collected in the area, and it’s famous for its ethnic complexity. This traditional Chinese tune is rearranged to a SATB chorus by Lemon Guo and a Chinese chamber ensemble including guzheng, pipa, erhu, dizi and bangu by Sophia Shen.
Untitled
2017
Voice, samples, electronics
Some thoughts on gravitational waves.
Exhibited as an audio installation at "The World Is Sound" at Rubin Museum of Art.
With physics consulting by Liting Xiao.
Composed and performed by Lemon Guo
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia
Hello?
2015
Voice, electronics
What is it like to have a conversation with a space? What is it like for different spaces to speak with one another? What is the relationship between a voice and a space? Does a voice have its own identity, independent of the space in which it resides? In this piece, the voice journeys to explore these questions through interactions with different acoustic and electronic spaces.
Composed by Lemon Guo, performed by Campbell Shiflett (Piano), Lemon Guo (Voice)
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia
道生一 Tao Begets One
2015
Voice, piano
“Tao begets one, one begets two, two begets three, three begets everything.” According to Lao Tzu, that’s how the universe began. When the vocalist sings into the piano with its sustain pedal down, the resonating sound embodies the idea of Tao. The pianist and the vocalist listen carefully to the vibrations of the piano strings, caused by the vocalist saying “Tao begets one”, which acts as a spectral analysis of the sound, and provides the pitches for them to produce. More and more harmonics are produced, and in turn a richer spectrum is created. This cycle continues and energy accumulates, until the space is saturated with sounds, and the piece naturally ends.
Lilies’ Talk
2014
Original soundtrack for the film Lilies’ Talk, directed by Samantha Liu
Composed and performed by Lemon Guo
Produced by Flynn Wheeler
Premiered at Madrid International Film Festival, 2017
Silent Song
2012
Written and arranged by Lemon Guo
Produced by Will Evans
Performed by Peter Hathotuwa (Guitar), Lemon Guo (Voice), Hicham Benhallam (Voice), Will Evans (Drum), Tim Swartz(Bass), Sophia Shen (Piano)