Great Artists Series, Faculty & Guest Performances, Ticketed

Great Artists Series '25: Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ and the Blood Moon Orchestra

(Washington University Box Office - 314-935-6543)
*purchases only refundable due to presenter cancellation

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Subscriptions: $150 for 6 performances!


Single Tickets
$35-40 general admission
$32-37 Wash U faculty/staff
$15 students/youth

Program:
While Vân Ánh (Vanessa) Võ is one of Vietnam’s most celebrated traditional artists, she revels in the freedom she’s found in the various musical styles surrounding her in the Bay Area. An award-winning performer on Vietnamese traditional music and virtuoso on 16-string dan tranh (zither), she’s also an Emmy Award-winning composer who has collaborated with Kronos Quartet, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Yo-Yo Ma, and Minneapolis Orchestra. The Blood Moon Orchestra is her protean quartet featuring marimba lumina wizard Joel Davel, award-winning jazz pianist and rapper Kev Choice, and master Jimi Nakagawa on taiko drums and percussion. With all four musicians also contributing vocals, Blood Moon Orchestra combines ancient sounds to create breathtaking music that feels completely new.

"To say Võ is making a splash is an understatement. Her compositions' rippling blend of musical genres and music played on her native country's instruments and often sung with her luminous vocals, have mesmerized musicians and audiences alike." —San Francisco Classical Voice


Biographies:

Vân-Ánh Võ is a Vietnamese composer, traditional multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist. Studying under six master musicians for different music genres and winning Vietnam's national championship title for her instruments gave Vân-Ánh a solid foundation in Vietnamese culture and music. Since moving to the United States in 2001, she has been composing, performing, teaching, and collaborating with many artists from different music genres to share the new sounds of Vietnamese instruments.

Vân-Ánh’s work draws inspiration from Vietnamese traditional folk songs, history, poetry, and literature to share the multi-faceted beauty of Vietnamese culture. Since 2012, she has focused on composing music that addresses social issues and tells stories relevant to Vietnamese and immigrant communities. For example, in collaboration with the Kronos Quartet, her composition "All Clear" involved extensive fieldwork in Vietnam. Vân-Ánh spent two months in Vietnam, traveling across the country, from North to South, from rice fields to beaches, interviewing and recording the sound and thoughts of more than 50 local people. Similarly, for "The Odyssey - from Vietnam to America," she interviewed 52 Vietnamese “Boat People” learning about their experiences and the strength, resilience, and hope they found to surpass the most challenging time in life. In her most recent production, "Mekong: LIFE," which explores the impacts of the climate crisis along the Mekong River, Vân-Ánh spent 27 days collecting field recordings and engaging with villagers in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The music created from these recordings serves as a theatrical piece, guiding listeners through shifting textures, sounds, and emotions that deepen their connection to the storyline.

Incorporating new sounds in music and creating symbols through the sounds of instruments is her passion. The question of what sounds Vân-Ánh should use and when she should use them always have her serious attention. For all of her music, her instruments—the đàn Tranh, đàn Bầu, k’ni, and artillery gongs—represent the Vietnamese cultural legacy, which may have been drowned out by the sound of war but still survive.

The counterintuitive and improvisational styles of Vietnamese traditional music have always been an integral part of Vân-Ánh’s composition process and collaborations with artists from different genres and cultures. Her written score usually leads the flow of the storyline of the compositions while the improvisational structures open opportunities for collaborating artists to share their voices.

Vân-Ánh’s first LP, "Twelve Months, Four Seasons" (2002) explores cycles of seasons and nature, motifs that are deeply rooted within her heritage. In her next studio release, "She’s Not She" (2009) with award-winning composer Bảo Đỗ, Vân-Ánh used folk music as the medium to explore critical turning points, using its sonic expression to portray the pivots that shift our nature and foci. In "Three-Mountain Pass", her third studio album, (2013) was selected as an NPR Top 10 World Music CD. "Three-Mountain Pass" brings voices of Vietnamese women pioneers and celebrates their courage that allowed future women to have the freedom to speak, to examine, and to expand the creation of Vietnamese art music. Vân-Ánh has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, San Jose Jazz Festival, Oakland Symphony, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and collaborated with jazz, rap, and global music artists. Additionally, she has co-composed and arranged for the Oscar® nominated and Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner for Best Documentary, Daughter from Danang (2002), the Emmy® Awards winning film and soundtrack for Bolinao 52 (2008), A Village Called Versailles (2009), and Vietnam War (2019).

In addition to touring internationally, Vân-Ánh has presented her music at Carnegie Hall, Zellerbach Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, the Olympic Games 2012 Music Festival, and the White House under President Obama.

Recently, Vân-Ánh has received a $150,000 commission award from Hewlett Foundation to compose new music for her multi-media production Mekong: LIFE. She also has received other grant awards including Creative Work Fund, California Arts Council, NEA, the Kennedy Center for The Arts, MAP Fund, Gerbode Music Award, Silicon Valley Creates, City of San Jose, San Francisco Arts Commissions, and San Jose Jazz.

In addition to the zither (đàn Tranh) Vân-Ánh also performs as soloist on the monochord (đàn Bầu), the bamboo xylophone (đàn T’rung), traditional drums (trống) and many other traditional instruments.

Vân-Ánh is the artistic director of her Blood Moon Orchestra, a genre-bending musical collective that defies the bounds of Vietnamese traditional music, hip-hop/rap, and breakdance. For more information, please visit: www.vananhvo.com.
 


Blood Moon Orchestra

Founded in 2010 by Van-Anh Vo, Blood Moon Orchestra (BMO) is a multicultural collective of immigrant artists (including Japanese, Iranian, African-American, Turkish, and Irish), composers, performers, and educators. Our mission is to promote mutual cultural understanding and respect while raising awareness about political and social issues through the use of music from diverse cultures, boundary pushing, and exploring the sonic capabilities of our respective instruments.

All master musicians, members of BMO have an innate ability to blend very different sounds, creating surprisingly new and fresh musical dialogues. BMO concerts have been addressing social issues, critically engaging underserved communities with issues of our times, and bridging cultures and generations through traditional music. Since its establishment, BMO has developed workshops serving underserved communities, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, successfully reaching 3,000 individuals and families each year. In 2019, BMO was a headliner and provided workshops to 12,800 audience members for BridgeFest Vietnam, a music festival that aimed to foster dialogue surrounding diversity and equality. During Covid-19, BMO facilitated virtual workshops to continue educating and developing the next generation through their work.

Collaborating with artists and ensembles from different music genres and using improvisational forms in jazz as its driving tools, BMO seeks to advance traditional music through innovation, cross-genre collaboration, and education. By charting new pathways for artistic expression, BMO aims to make unequivocal the role of traditional music in forging radical possibilities for the future. By centering traditional music, BMO seeks not only to preserve but also to propel the traditional arts into the twenty-first century and beyond, and with it, a vision for and commitment to a more expressive, connected, and socially just world.

 

**All programs subject to change
 

 

 

SUBSCRIPTIONS