or/and is a chamber operatic poem, following the journey of a Composer who finds her voice only when she accepts the seeming contradictions of her immigrant identity. Choosing “and” over the divisive “or,” this work taps into the inclusive power of AND to help mend our divided world.

When we meet the Composer, she’s struggling to write a piece of music inspired by two events half a world apart—a sacred ceremony of the indigenous Paiwan people of Taiwan and the Women’s March in Houston. Having attended both, she gleaned from them different lessons about herself that she is working to reconcile. Her search to find the right notes is mirrored by a search to find the right words. Her only daughter is heading to college, and there’s a pivotal sentence that the Composer-Mother wants to complete: “Before you go, I want you to know….” Musical and maternal instincts flow, once the composer begins to understand that she belongs to a continuum, buoyed by human connections rather than divisions.