The following is adapted from the Blue Griffin Recording web site.
The Grammy award-winner, former Eighth Blackbird violinist, and current Michigan State University violin faculty member Yvonne Lam released her first solo album recently, and in characteristic style, it is an innovative and beautifully executed work.
Released on the Blue Griffin label (BGR 647), “Watch Over Us” includes compositions for solo violin and electronics by some of the most accomplished women alive today. Featured is the world premiere recording of “Watch Over Us” by Nathalie Joachim (written for Lam) and the transcription for violin of Missy Mazzoli’s “Tooth and Nail.” Also on the collection, music by Katherine Balch, Anna Clyne, Eve Beglarian, and Kate Moore.
“Even though I am the only live performer in each piece, it never feels like a solo,” writes Lam in the liner notes. “I actually feel that I am in a way per¬forming with the composer, who created the fixed media part exactly to their taste. Over time, performing with these tapes felt akin to playing with a longtime chamber music partner whose intentions you can divine with your gut and whose sounds combine with yours to become something larger than the sum of its parts.”
Joachim, Lam’s Eighth Blackbird colleague, originally intended the recording’s title composition, “Watch Over Us,” as a documentary film score. Though the film itself never materialized, Lam said her premiere performance of the work, along with “other works for solo violin and electronics by remarkable women” inspired this album.
“Watch Over Us,” by Yvonne Lam, featuring works by Nathalie Joachim, Missy Mazzoli, Katherine Balch, Anna Clyne, Eve Beglarian, and Kate Moore. Blue Griffin Recording.
“I’ve been a fan of Anna Clyne’s music for well over a decade,” writes Lam. “’Rest These Hands’ is technically acoustic, but I included it because of the poignant poem written by her mother that is read over the solo violin.” Lam says she has been eager to play Kate Moore’s “Synaesthesia Suite” since she first learned of its existence. “I love the kaleidoscope of colors created by the track, and the vast arc of the musical journey Kate takes us on.”
As violinist and Co-Artistic Director of Eighth Blackbird from 2011-2019, Lam won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance with the venerable ensemble for the album “Filament.” As a youngster, she began playing violin by mistake: she thought she was learning to play guitar. Ultimately, she went on to earn degrees in violin at Juilliard and Curtis.
Since joining the faculty of the MSU College of Music, Lam has performed regularly, led a successful studio, and reinvigorated the chamber music program for which she also serves as director. She has contributed moving interviews and performances in the College’s Music for Social Justice series on WKAR, and her initiation of a Lunar New Year celebratory recital has quickly become a highlight in the College’s season of events each year.
