How I create... with composer Huang Ruo

That’s how the music of Huang Ruo was described by The New York Times, and who are we to argue?

Known for crossing cultural borders and breaking genre barriers, Huang Ruo has established himself as a significant creative voice in today’s music world, deploying his multi-dimensional style in compositions for orchestra, chamber, music theatre, opera, theatrical production, multi-media, live-art installation and everything in between.

Initially introduced to both piano and composition by his father – himself a composer – as a child in Hainan Island, China, Huang Ruo went on to receive both a traditional Chinese and Western education at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music; a fusion of East and West that remains evident in his compositions today. Moving to the US he furthered his musical education at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Juilliard School, and is currently the artistic director and conductor of Ensemble FIRE, as well as being in residence at the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan.

In April 2025 Huang Ruo brought his experiential work City of Floating Sounds to the streets of London, and ultimately to our Royal Festival Hall, as part of our Multitudes series. And ahead of the arrival of this remarkable work, we took the time to catch up with the composer to get a deeper insight into his creative process.

When and where do you find yourself at your most creative?

Maybe we all wish we could live in a world like Mahler’s, with a summerhouse by the lake where we can compose surrounded by beautiful nature. But in reality the world we live in is full of challenges, full of noise. Yet it’s also full of inspiration; that which comes through life’s story and the struggles we live. So in order to be inspired we need to reach out to our own surroundings.

We see the same world, but with our own lens and with our own way of thinking. So rather than needing to be in a certain place to be creative, it’s more about who I am and how I am seeing what I am seeing. Inspiration can come without warning; sometimes I could sit in a room for three days and nothing will come to mind, but then I could be walking down the street or on the subway and find inspiration there, completely unexpected. It’s an imperfect world, but I think that’s where I find my inspiration and my creativity.

How do you know when an idea is worth developing into something more?

There is no specific measurement or guideline; there’s no test I have for whether ‘this is a good idea’ or ‘this is not a good idea’. For example, when I’m writing for opera, or music for a theatre piece, sometimes the subject or story, as great as they may be, they’re just not meant for the stage. However, with some stories, you hear them for the first time and straight away you have a good feeling that they’ll make a wonderful stage work. So I think it comes down to a certain degree of instinct, having a sixth sense. But also, I’m constantly looking for interesting ideas, I’m not sitting and waiting. I may find ten ideas, but then only one of them proves really inspiring, or is able to work how I want it, but that’s still great, that’s one great idea.

Which tools are key to your creative process?

As strange as it sounds, the most important tool for me is actually my mobile phone. Often, when an idea hits me I like to sing it, and an idea could come at any time, whether I’m inside, or outside, doing something, or resting. So I’ll record myself singing the idea with my phone. I have lots of short clips of me singing out ideas, which is really helpful, because if I hadn’t recorded them in the moment, I would have forgotten them.

I sing everything through. Whether it is a vocal or instrumental piece, I’ll always use my voice first to sing it through. It’s much more personal that way than writing it down with paper and pencil. When I sing an idea I can feel it; feel the emotion, feel where to breathe, feel where it lands and where it takes off. Sometimes I record an idea without necessarily knowing what it’s for, and then later when I’m writing a piece I might come back to it and find that it works there. Sometimes the idea might not prove usable, but it was still useful as a documentary of my creative process.

Most of the time I record my own singing, but on occasion I also record interesting sounds I hear, like a construction site; or one time I was in the Smokey Mountains and happened to be awake at 5am just as dawn was starting to break and all the birds began singing, surrounding me, and it was so beautiful I recorded it. So in a sense I’m a collector; a collector of ideas, a collector of voices, a collector of sounds. 

Who are you creating your work for?

As an artist, as a composer, I always want to communicate, to connect. And that connection comes in many ways. The first connection is to bring the sounds I hear, and the thoughts in my head, into being as a piece of music. I also want to connect with the performers and musicians I’m writing for, that’s a very important connection.

Also, I want to connect with the space and the setting. With City of Floating Sounds, I conceived that work for a city – it could be any city, but it should be a place with a lot of people, who can then come together to create a communal event, a communal celebration. So I’m writing for that space and that setting.

And last but not least is the audience. I want to connect with the people who are listening and bring them into that world, so they feel like they’re not just observing something, but they’re actually part of it; they’re part of the process, part of the experience. So that’s who I’m creating work for.

How do you stay disciplined, and dedicated to your work?

It’s hard, because our life and our world has a lot of distractions. But one thing that has helped me tremendously is learning to say no. And that comes in many ways. There could be the opportunity for an excellent commission, one that pays a lot, or involves writing for someone very famous. But if the idea is not interesting, or if I would just be repeating myself, then I feel I should say no to that. I have to be selective, be picky, and say no to things I feel may not be challenging or might not challenge me to create the best work I can, to make me a better artist.

Also, I’ve learned to say no to things that might affect my writing. Sometimes it could be great to take a trip somewhere, to go to this or that and have fun. But again, that might affect what I’m writing. So, I have to be able to say no to things that may not be relevant to what I want to do. Being a composer is a very lonely and solitary process. We need to say no to things, sometimes to things it is very hard to say no to. But we have to make sacrifices in order to be who we are and do what we do. 

That’s the bigger picture, but as a smaller detail I also try to write music every day. Some people might say I’m trying to make it a habit, but for me it’s more that I’m making it a part of my life. It’s like water. We all have to drink water every day and me, I need to write music every day so it becomes part of the ritual, part of the routine, part of who I am and part of my body’s process. And that helps me stay both dedicated and creative.

What do you do when you hit a wall; when you feel unmotivated or uninspired? How do you overcome this?

Moments like that can come quite often, and they definitely hit me. My strategy is always that if this is not the best time for me to continue writing then I should not force myself, I should stop. And that might mean not writing at that moment or maybe not writing that day. Instead of hitting my head against the wall, I’ll just let go for a while and come back to it at a later time.

But it’s something of a double-edged sword for me, because I am someone who gets very attached to things. I don’t write things down as I go, either on paper or on a computer, I will think everything through in my head first, so once I do write things down they’re pretty much permanent, I don’t go back to change things often. I create by moving along a path, and I will always try to continue along that path rather than giving up, so letting go of something, even for a moment, isn’t easy.

But then sometimes the best ideas come to me when I’m resting, or even when I’m sleeping. I’ve often dreamt ideas for songs and then woken up and forgotten them, so I’ve learned to immediately sing the idea to my phone when I wake. Sometimes, I have dreamt that I have finished an entire piece really easily, and it was really good; then when I wake up it’s disappeared and I’m left disappointed. And I’ll try to recreate the dream to figure out what it was, but with no luck. I suppose we are all better writers in our dreams

Who do you look to for feedback?

It will depend on the work. If I’m writing for opera or a vocal piece, I love to know who I’m writing for. If the singers have already been cast I’ll communicate with them to let them try it out, because I want to create something suitable to their voice that they feel happy to sing.

But I also like to put myself in the position of an observer, or a critic. I’ll sing something or play a piece and try to put myself in the place of someone who has just walked into the room. As that listener, how do I feel about the work? What’s my reaction to it?

The benefit of music is that it is very abstract, it flows with time, so in any one moment, the listener doesn’t know what will happen in the next. If you’re looking at a painting you see everything there in front of you. If you see the Mona Lisa, you’re seeing everything Da Vinci put into it; it’s all there, even hundreds of years later. But music needs time to unfold, and you need to travel that journey with it. So, I’ll ask myself ‘how do I present this journey?’

I want the listener to come on the journey, but I also don’t want to let them know too much. Sometimes I’ll want them to know a little, so they might anticipate what’s coming next, but then in other moments I might want to surprise them. So as a dramaturg, as a theatrical person, I create my symphonic work and instrumental work this way as well; I think about who the observers are; what are their reactions? What will they think of their journey? This helps me plan the journey of the music. Composers are like magicians in that way; you want to guide your audience through your performance, and you want to offer surprises, but you don’t want to give away everything you have planned.

How different is your creative process now to when you first began as an artist?

I think when I first began, as with a lot of young composers, I was full of ideas. I had a lot of great ideas. I would write a piece of music, sometimes in just a few minutes, but it would still have many ideas in it. Now, I’m pickier about my ideas, and I want to see how I can make the most out of even just the smallest idea. 

I think that’s something which has come as my technique and my composition craft have evolved with my ability to create longer and bigger works. The more experienced I am as a composer and artist, the deeper I can see or hear things that I could not see or hear when I was much younger. It’s the same objects, the same sounds; the environment hasn’t changed, it’s me who has changed.

What does success feel like?

I think in the musical world, it’s not as simple as successful or unsuccessful. Every piece of work I create is like one of my children. They are in that moment for a reason, so even if one work is performed more often than the others I don’t necessarily see that as being better or more successful; they’re all part of my composition journey.

But one experience I can share is when we gave the world premiere of City of Floating Sounds in Manchester. In the first part of the work people begin from different starting points in the city and walk towards the performance venue. They download the music and play it on their phone as they make that journey, and they share that music, they interact with each other and create a sort of kinetic moving symphony. And as I was walking with them several participants said to me ‘thank you for gifting us this piece, for gifting this piece to Manchester’. 

And that touched me really deeply. That they really took ownership of the music, they really felt that this was a piece written for them and they were part of it; they were enjoying it and they felt they could relate to it and understand. And to me that is one of the best rewards of creating a piece of work.

The second part of City of Floating Sounds is an immersive experience which we premiered at Factory International. Normally, in a concert hall, when you listen to Beethoven or Mahler, everybody is quiet, everybody is still, there is only one way to listen. But here I could see people dancing and walking around and having a wonderful time, or just sitting with their eyes closed, because there are so many ways for people to listen to one piece of music. Afterwards I had people tell me that this was their first experience of listening to a live orchestra, and I thought wow, I hope they don’t assume every concert is like this. 

For better or for worse we are creating an experience for people, so comments like these are very precious to me, because they tell me that this work has a meaning, and that people were able to connect to it, and that means a lot, it’s very rewarding.

Is there a piece of advice you’ve received that you often find yourself returning to?

One piece of advice that’s particularly important to me is that less is more. It’s actually something I teach to my students as well, that rather than exploring lots of ideas quickly, maybe it’s better to stick with one and get the most out of that. That’s one form of less is more, and also, as I’ve said, learning that saying no to things can be better than saying yes.

I’m happy as a composer. I don’t ask for much, material wise or entertainment wise, so I think the less we need is key. People want a lot of things, but maybe the less we need the happier we are, and the more focussed I can be.

What’s the most recent thing you learned about yourself through your work?

I’m glad you asked this question. In the past, when creating an opera I would leave certain things to the director, or the conductor, or the choreographer, on the assumption that they would know exactly what the opera is about and what it needed. But everything in the creative process is intertwined, so if I don’t speak my mind about how, say, a certain moment in the music is closely connected to a traumatic action, I can’t expect everyone to know that. If I don’t write it down or share that with people, then they might miss that cue, and then it’s too late.

So I’ve suffered sometimes by not communicating everything to my collaborative partners and this is something I’ve learned. Now I put all those important moments into my score; so if there is a key moment here, on this note, I write down what that means dramatically, so we’re all on the same page. I wish I could have done this with some of my earlier works, but it’s proven very helpful to me now.

How do you know when you’re done?

There are different kinds of composers. Some will go back to make everything in the past perfect, or as great as it could be. But I feel that is to change history, to change who we were. Every piece I’ve written serves as a documentary of who I was. So when I finish a piece, I will leave it behind and won’t go back to change it. Each piece is just one step on the long journey of my creative process; every piece is related, every piece is connected, and no piece really has a beginning or an end, because they take a breath from the previous work and breathe life into the next work. Writing music is, to me, like living life, one breath at a time.

Want to read more articles like this?
We’ve just The Tonic

Get the arts and artists shaping our culture straight to your inbox, every month.

Sign me up