Mong-Lan: Music (original) (raw)
**behind the physical world, infinite music ---**Mong-Lan
Mong-Lan sings in six languages, plays the piano and guitar, composes and writes songs. She has released over ten albums which feature her jazz piano, tangos originating from South America & Buenos Aires, and which also showcase her poetry.
New Album with voice and guitar: Arrabal de Tango: Tango por Siempre (2020). Check it out here
Book Mong-Lan for shows
presentations
Mong-Lan's solo show, Ocean of Senses: Dream Songs & Tangos: one woman's journey from Sai Gon to Buenos Aires via America, blends original poetry, jazz piano, guitar, dance, story and song. Watch the trailer here.
Performing tangos with voice & guitar, in Austin, TX, at Esquina Tango, 2019.
Performing in New York City, at the cabaret and piano bar, Don't Tell Mama.
New Orleans of My Heart: jazz piano, 2019, Valiant Productions. Available on iTtunes, Amazon, etc.
New Orleans of My Heart is my contribution of original compositions to the city of jazz and piano, of syncopated heartbeat and spirituals; this-- a journey of healing and discovery through music. Drinking in the air that is music in New Orleans rejuvenates and restores. Here one finds magic, bygone heirlooms of cultures, memorabilia, wrecked love, bruised hearts. The music of the Mississippi River, the magic of the river, the land, finds its forms not only in the beauty of the landscape, but in the music that forms its air and people. On the streets, near the river, folks sing spirituals, drumming; I hear banjos, trumpets, saxophones, bagpipes, charming, taming the river. In clubs, on plazas, in nooks and crannies, on well-worn streets of the French Quarter. With this new album, I offer my contribution to jazz piano and the city.
Dreaming Orchid: Poetry & Jazz Piano (2016), award-winning spoken word poetry coupled with Mong-Lan's enchanting jazz piano. Sultry, profound, comical, quick-witted poems from Mong-Lan’s book, One Thousand Minds Brimming: poetry & art, and Tango, Tangoing: poetry & art.
For international artist Mong-Lan, her love affair with the tango began over twenty years ago, beginning with the dance. Along with her family, she had left her native Viet Nam on the last day of the evacuation of Sai Gon. Mong-Lan’s musical education began when she was a child, studying the violin for several years. For many years as an adolescent, she studied classical piano with various private teachers. Later, living in Buenos Aires from 2009, she studied opera singing with various well-known sopranos, and at the same time, studied tango singing with tango singers and musicians. With regard to playing tango and technique on the guitar, she has studied with several private teachers in Buenos Aires, to include Enrique Santillan. She also lived for a time in New Orleans, listening to the jazz played in the music houses, on the streets and in the bars. Mong-Lan sings in six languages, composes music and writes songs. Her ten albums of jazz piano and tangos also showcase her poetry. She has performed nationally and internationally for cultural organizations, on college campuses, in cabarets and clubs. Former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and Fulbright Scholar, Mong-Lan is also an award-winning poet and writer, and professional tango dancer and teacher.
Her jazz piano album releases can be found here and below: Diary: Voyages; Visions: Diary; and City of Dreams - Ciudad de Sueños; Equivalences / Synchronicities; Under 13 Moons; The Cosmic Blues ~ Dragonfly Dances; New Orleans of My Heart.
What folks are saying
"Mong-Lan's work is compelling! She moves my heart with her poetic
melodic rhythms of emotions creating a tactile resonance that simply touches
me at my core.”—David Hauser, music producer, writer, artist.
"Mistress of Nerve and Gumption, Light Airy Notes.”—Ken Waldman, writer, musician.
"Beautiful impressionistic works . . .”—Loren Pickford, jazz musician and artist.
"Beautiful . . . .”—Bremner Duthie, singer, performer.
"Mong-Lan is an extremely multitalented artist bridging not only various
arts but various artistic styles. I most recently saw her read and perform
her music at an evening dedicated to the Beat Poets of San Francisco
that was held at the Beat Museum. It was an incredible event.”
—Dr. Marla Lowenthal, Univ of San Francisco, 2016.
"Dreaming Orchid: Poetry & Jazz piano" has some cool sounds and great poems. The jazz stimulated my cortex, and the gustatory language wet my tongue.”—Stephen Page, poet.
"Extraordinarily gifted.”—Matty Selman, performing artist.
"She re-makes the tango, makes it new. Her originals are catchy
and pretty fantastic.”—Maxi C.
"I loved hearing her play her jazz piano while she recites her poetry.
Just marvelous.”—Stephanie C., artist and musician.
" . . . A remarkable encounter of sound that enters the celestial dance
of wakefulness and dreaming just as it is . . ."
Para Encontrarte: Tangos y Más
An amalgamation of classic tangos, sung by Mong-Lan, with guitar and bandoneón, and new fusion tangos, poetry and music by Mong-Lan. Valiant Productions, 2016.
Under 13 Moons by Mong-Lan
Inspired by New Orleans, the music of the solar system, the intricacies of sound & being, Nature herself, "Under 13 Moons" divulged itself slowly and imperceptibly.
"Listening to Mong-Lan's new piano album "Under 13 Moons" — and particularly the second track on the album, "Witness: Sleep's Skin" — in terms of the soul's ever-present breath in both worlds of wakefulness and dreams, the music is one of the more indelibly fragile works of beautiful sound . . . . From the outset these soundflows are fully tuned (in F sharp) to the wellspring of both states of being, the physical state of the sleeper whose mind is awake, and the physical state of the dreamer whose body is asleep. The composition "Witness: Sleep's Skin" is the birth of both, at once, ever-born and ever-continuing, as the fingers alight the keys again and again — neither in search of commingled forces & energies of sound that become notational indices of balance — nor as intercessors of evincing harmonies which, by point of fact, wish to prove that such a relationship between sounds exists. Yet, here it is, a remarkable encounter of sound that enters the celestial dance of wakefulness and dreaming just as it is — sounding the plexus of deep being, whose sum-score becomes the sound of what it already is —before balance — a beingness of music whose breath is infinitesimally, and infinitely, the fragile music of being — neither awake, nor alseep, and the breath of both. A music which tells all, . . . a musicality of sounds that are always ever there-here, the soul's song."