The cello suites by Benjamin Britten (Opp. 72, 80, and 87) are a series of three compositions for solo cello, dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich. This recording is one of those 3 suites, No 2, Declamato

I began by decoding the music itself it and paying close attention to the variety of elements the composer, Chopin, might've embedded within his composition, for instance the tempo markings, dynamics, etc.

I grew up in church, and that's how I learned to sing. My first ever gospel song was " Yes God is real" and this past July I sung "Yes God is real" at my church. The song has so much meaning . And I was blessed to sing this song for the NAACP.

This is a an excerpt of the Allegro con Spirito from Mozart’s Violin Sonata No. 18 in G Major, K. 301.

I created "Flowers Never Bend" over the summer using music by Simon and Garfunkel, my favorite songwriters. I wanted to create a loose narrative, around the idea of being stuck alone, and stuck in a constant cycle of overthinking.

The idea of being trapped is an idea that is familiar to many. Oftentimes when we think about this idea of being trapped we think of it in a literal sense. You may think of criminals as being trapped or dogs in a shelter, so how could a non-criminal lawful human being be trapped? The idea of being trapped isn’t nearly as powerful as the emotion of being trapped because a legal and lawful individual may feel more trapped than a criminal in solitary. The emotion and the literal idea of being trapped are two completely different things. To convey the feeling of being trapped it requires deep reflection about why people feel trapped. People can feel trapped because of a multitude of reasons. Maybe they don’t like their job, their marriage, their current emotional state, or how their life is unfolding. To convey this feeling I chose to use a black and white filter in order to limit the image. By limiting the image I hope to convey this feeling of being trapped because I’m not allowing it to have color. Instead, I can be more in control of the image because I won't have colors adding extra meaning that I can’t necessarily control. The black-and-white filter also allows me to play with lighting in a way that I haven’t been able to before since it leaves a more dramatic contrast between the whites and blacks in the colors. The dramatic contrast adds a more timeless and dramatic feeling.

Thoughts on the conflicts of aging

Over the past few years, I've seen a rise in teen writers using their cultural identity as the basis of their art. I have always had mixed feelings for this: it almost seems trendy now to use one's race to speak about discrimination, even if that is fabricated. In America, I don't always feel in touch with my identity. I feel out of place in both cultures I'm part of, and sometimes I feel like I'm not knowledgeable enough to write poetry about being Chinese. For me, culture is a complicated thing and though I wish to be able to create art inspired by my feelings towards it, it seems far too dimensional to put into words. I want to create poetry surrounding my own feelings, but I don't think I know myself well enough to. Perhaps this is my own way of grappling with my cultural identity in the midst of a world that is as confused as I am. This poem, rather than being a one-night thing that I got a sudden inspiration for, was instead written over the course of two weeks. I struggled with my language and my feelings a lot, and what began as a criticism of using one's culture for one's own artistic benefit turned into a complex questioning of my own identity and my relationship to it.

This story is the true experience of my grandfather during the India Pakistan Partition in 1947. At the time he was 8 years old and his parents had left him, his brother, and his grandmother in Pakistan while his dad got a new job in India. This is my interpretation of his story on how he reunited with his family in India.

This poem was created to express my appreciation for the 'little moments', and memories from my childhood. As a first generation teenager growing up in America, I have developed an immense appreciation for my family across seas in Sri Lanka, and the memories that are created. Time and time again, as I am brought back to my grandmother's house after a long flight, am blessed with a certain nostalgic feeling that I'll never forget: a memory of my culture.

When I sit down to write, I’ve found that soulful music helps me best create meaningful work. Perhaps it’s the sharing of universal human experiences that I’m compelled and inspired by. I thus listened to many melodies while writing this. My goal is always to be as vulnerable and honest as I can. That objective is frightening, but all the same vital. I chose to write about the California coast because it has been a steadfast part of my life and soul, through cutting grief and light-heartedness alike. I included the theme of growing pains throughout the writing to subtly comment on how we as people ultimately don’t have a say in what happens to us, but a world of choice in letting go.

I wanted to create a sense of urgency that can only be captured when the poem feels like its on the verge of insanity. When I wrote this piece, I was encapsulated in the idea of routine, the balance between longing and taking, and the hunger that comes with girlhood. My poem seeks to capture this balance. My artistic process went somewhat like this: I first started with a brainstorm, letting myself free write all over a blank document. I then went through many different drafts trying to capture the authenticity of the original words. I read and re-read the poem, I made both mundane and major edits, and at the end of it all I can honestly say that I put myself wholly in this piece.

I wrote this piece as a reflection of my life growing up in the Bay Area and its cities. Anytime I step foot outside or on MUNI or BART, I feel a connection to my surroundings in a very observational way. To me, my writing reflects those notices with details and comparisons that I often find myself thinking about when going anywhere. While I wrote, I noticed that I started to stray from strict non-fiction and give a bit more glamor and magic to urban living, but it is definitely still a representation of my urban experience. My favorite thing about living in a metropolitan mania, a double meaning in the title, is how everything connects: the streets you walk on to the trains you take, the ground under your feet to the sky over your head. This web manifested itself in my piece and I'm very glad to be able to share my appreciation through writing.

Memories fascinate me. How we trust them, how they can be manipulated, and how something so fragile defines who we are. In this story, set in a nation where both the government and the Resistance use mind manipulation without the citizenry’s awareness, Ethan, the Resistance leader, seeks to convince his wife, Vivienne, who’s still under the government’s influence, to join him in the fight. The original story is a crucial part of a larger plot I’m developing. After reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s A Temporary Matter, I returned to the piece, fleshing out Vivienne and her relationship to Ethan as I questioned how a character would deal with having her memories altered day after day without her awareness. I wanted to explore what manipulation does to not just individuals but also their relationships, and the price a person is willing to pay for what they believe in.

This poem follows the story of a young boy who decides to talk to the sickly old woman in his neighborhood and learns her story. I think that more awareness on the topics that are discussed in this piece needs to be spread, especially awareness towards elderly people who experienced this earlier in life.

This short collection of poems depicts two of the things that I and many others struggle with out of the many aspects of mental health: body dysmorphia and suicidal ideation. Although there is so much more to my story, these are two things that I battle day to day and I wanted to share my experience. The first piece is aimed to tackle in intricate detail what it feels like to not know how you actually look, and the constant anxiety and body checking to try to decipher it and how others perceive you. The second piece describes the thoughts that ran through my head constantly when my suicidal ideation was at its worst. I am proud of both of these pieces, the vulnerability is especially new to me since I am usually a private person. I hope that through this collection whoever reads this can really feel the emotions encapsulated in it.

My writing piece is a short creative essay on being a woman and talks about personal experience and has different perspectives.

This was a very personal and complicated piece for me to write. My mother comes from a very small town in Ireland, where generations of my family are from due to the lack of resources required to move elsewhere. Whenever I visit I have this guilt that hangs over me, because I have so much more opportunity than any of my cousins who were raised in that town. I wrote this poem from the perspective of one of my cousins to highlight the feeling of worthlessness that is perpetuated by the town's community. Since I am lucky enough to have supportive parents that consistently do what's best for their kids, it's easy for me to forget that not everyone is as privileged as I am. Writing this poem helped me connect with my roots in a way I never expected. What really became clear to me when writing this poem is that the set of circumstances in which a person is born into is not their fault. While we may judge some people for drinking at an early age, or maturing too quickly, it's important to understand that these things aren't the fault of the person, but the fault of circumstance. The title of this piece, Éalú ó Bhiorra, means "Escape from Birr" in Irish Gaelic. It was important to me to preserve pieces of my culture in this poem, so I included bits of Irish customs in it as well.

Born in Beijing, I came to the United States when I was three years old and have continued to feel a sense of longing and kinhood with the city I left behind and the invisible ways in which it has shaped me. "Confession to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics" is a meditation on just that, the conflicting emotions that come with loving your birth town while living in a home so far away, especially given the hostile Chinese American relationship. I thought the Olympics captured this sense of competition and unease yet global reconciliation well. The motifs of fire and ice illustrate my passion and affection versus the situations I am faced with, the "thin ice" on which I stand and "skate." I also like the connotations to global warming and the end of the world (like "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost), further signifying the frenzy and experience of living in a complicated world. The decision of spacing aims to illustrate a transcending of the typical narrative/story I am telling of my immigration and more personally portray my affection for Beijing—how it transcends borders, time, and reason. The taking off of the leotard at the end is also a symbol of removing all the external conditions and loving Beijing fully and purely. While writing this piece, I find myself reading it out loud over and over again to ensure it sounds like a confession from me; a genuine verbal letter to the city that will never leave me.

This was my final project for my screenwriting class last year. The prompt was "Untranslatable Words." The word 'flâneur' is a French word that, although now used as Parisian slang for loiterer, began as a word that meant "one who walks to enjoy walking." The story, although it's hard to see from the short five pages submitted, is about a man named Rob Auclair who's only joy in life is walking. Since this is the first five pages, you do not see much more than the exposition, but eventually Rob becomes paralyzed in a tragic accident while walking and drives himself mad, to the brink of suicide, trying to find a surgical solution to his legs or a virtual solution so he can walk again in his mind. I was listening to a lot of French music and jazz while writing this, hence the song titles to accompany the montages. This is one of my favorite works I've ever done and I hope you enjoy. *Please note, although this is set in Paris, the dialogue has been "translated" to English for A. writing simplicity, as English is my first language and B. reading simplicity