Name: Ruiqi Wang
Nationality: Chinese, Canada-and-Switzerland-based
Occupation: Vocalist, composer, improviser
Current release: Ruiqi Wang's Subduing The Silence is out via Orchard Of Pomegranates.
Recommendations: Kaleidoscope: Selected Poems of P.K. Page (edited by Zailig Pollock); Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music (Henry Threadgill, Brent Hayes Edwards)

If you enjoyed this Ruiqi Wang interview and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram. For an even deeper dive, read out conversation with Ruiqi about sound. 



For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

To get started, I need concrete ideas to grasp onto. They could be a musical motif to which I might or might not assign meaning, an attitude towards a specific topic, emotions, etc. They are usually very specific.

But to me, I never start with the visualization of a finished work. Actually, it is very difficult for me to have a frame like that. I like working with specific materials and see where they lead themselves to, and of course I take part in this process by making decisions based on my aesthetics. The finished work is just the result of this process, which is usually hard to predict.

So I guess planning and chance both exist in this process. I let the materials unfold their own possibilities, and even the material itself can come from chance, but I plan and decide how to use the material and the direction it goes.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

The creative state is definitely spiritual and very sacred for me. This might sound a bit silly, but what I think I experience in my creative state is “happiness”, a word that is strangely rare to hear people say nowadays. I feel very fortunate to be able to experience it in my creative process, and I think that’s the reason why I do it.

It is a state of flow, being focused, non-judgmental, calm, hopeful, open and honest. It does not happen all the time, but I get to be in that kind of state once in a while, and it is really a blessing for me.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

It is necessary for me to let a piece sit, to forget about it a bit, and even to forget the version of myself that was writing the piece. That way, I can really just look at the piece from the way it is, and not make connection between the piece and my self-worth as the composer.

In terms of how much improvement and refinement I allow, I don’t believe that there is any absolutely finalized one version of any piece that I wrote. They can always be changed based on the context and the musicians who will play them.

I can also be satisfied with multiple versions of the same piece. To me, it is very fluid. The pieces are fine the way they are, but at the same time, there is always room for adjustment and change.

What do you start with? And, to quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

To start a piece, I need to figure out what I want to say first. Sometimes it’s through brainstorming, free writing or improvisation, sometimes it’s through research into specific topics.

When talking about a musical idea to start a piece with, I think about melody, rhythm, harmony. I think it is extremely difficult for composers nowadays to create something completely new in those, because we have an enormous historical archive, and that is what we as composers learn from.

But it is the way and context we use the musical idea that we create and can be unique and original.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

To me, creating is a need and anything has the potential to be an inspiration.

For example, “A Descent of Lilies” from my album “Subduing the Silence” is inspired by a painting under the same title by Pegi Nicol MacLeod. I was very touched by the way the woman in the painting was portrayed, and I wanted to write something with that similar aesthetic and energy.



Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

For me, the key element to the “right” creative mindset is being open and not self-critical. Creative ideas are always flowing, no matter what I am doing. But it is a matter of whether I am able to allow, accept and appreciate the ideas that come to me and make something meaningful out of them.

Rituals like a cup of warm coffee or tea, burning incense, doing yoga or go jogging all add a kind of gentleness to my mind. They also help me to get more in touch with my body, to breath better and to slow down. All of those help with creativity.

But sometimes it is also fun to enter a creative state totally “unprepared” without any rituals, which can lead to great results a lot of the time.

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

Lyrics for me is like one of all the other compositional elements. They can come into the picture at many different stages.

There are two tracks in my new album “Subduing the Silence” that I composed with lyrics. I wrote music for “Fragments for Subduing the Silence” because I love the poetry that already existed, whereas in “Dream of the Pines”, the music and lyrics grew together.



I have also written lyrics to music that already existed, but I have not yet tried adding lyrics to wordless music that I composed, but that is something I would like to do as well.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

It happens to me all the time. I always try to explore my materials as much as I can, and try to catch as many possibilities as I can. I usually end up only using a very small portion of all the possibilities that reveal themselves. I might save the rest for future use, or I might never use them and just let them exist in my secret world.

But the process of exploring alternative roads and different possibilities is quite essential to me.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

To me, creativity is a lifestyle and I don’t separate it from so-called ‘mundane' tasks. There can something very magical about making a cup of coffee, going to work, lifting my legs and moving my fingers.

I think what separates music creation from the mundane-ness is whether you are sensitive enough to catch to the magic or weirdness of little things in life.