We did a lot of research and literature reading before we went into practice. One of my biggest regrets is that I was not able to follow what some of the scholars I read said, that not only do the performer do the improvisation, but the orchestra has to improvise with the performer as well. Finding a group of bands that are all good and have a tacit understanding in a short period of time is difficult because it means they need a lot of time to bond, as well as bonding with the performer. So in the end, we decided that I would do the accompaniment beforehand, and the performer would listen and familiarize herself with it and experiment with it before proceeding to formal vocal improvisation. Perhaps if we had more time to prepare the improvised band, the result of this piece would have been more surprising.

In the process of creating the accompaniment, I still embellished some tonal melody to guide the performer. The work is meant to be a satire on the vanity of consumerism, so the style of the music is not exactly experimentalist, but rather takes place under a seemingly elegant shell, corresponding to the people who go along for the ride in pursuit of the highbrow but who are the opposite of the experimentalist’s idiosyncrasies.

I am very happy with the part my partner did. Even though I don’t have much in the field of costume design, it is superbly rendered in light. If we had the opportunity to extend this work, I would challenge myself to improvise an opera by myself as a performer after refining my vocal skills, which might allow me to express the main idea of the work more liberally than a performer who has been trained in professional opera for a long time.