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BY JOAN KIM

In print | Published April 3, 2008

Last Sunday, the Lang Concert Hall was completely silent as violinist Serena Le ‘08 entered the stage in an ebony dress with a vibrant fuchsia train for the start of her Senior Honors Recital. Little did anyone know, Le’s younger brother, Bonaire Le, also a violinist, had hand-sewn the train onto the dress himself only several hours before. The last minute addition defined that night; like the brilliant splash of color on her black dress, Le’s inspired violin-playing filled the hall with vivacity.

Le never intended to pursue music academically at Swarthmore College, but when she auditioned her freshman year for the Swarthmore Orchestra, the conductor at the time, Daniel Wachs, seated her as Concertmistress of the orchestra. She described the responsibility as “very intimidating” as she led a large group of older musicians. Le also performed as the first violinist of a string quartet and received full scholarship as a Garrigues scholar for private lessons.

At the same time, Associate Professor of Music Tom Whitman encouraged Le to study music theory in order to better understand the music she performed. After initially struggling with music theory, Le embraced it when she discovered “there was greater complexity to the music than I had ever thought about.”

Le credits her will to accept challenges for propelling her throughout her musical career. When Le was only six years old, she recounts that she “begged to learn the violin because somebody told [her] that it was the hardest instrument.” She took this difficult challenge, and after the guidance of a loving teacher, transformed the challenge into a passion and love.

As a first year at Swarthmore College, Le found support and inspiration in the music department. She started to take lessons with Barbara Govatos, a first violinist for the Philadelphia Orchestra, during which she rediscovered the depth and intricacy of previously learned pieces. Her newly found knowledge of music theory added to the experience. “A lot of the pieces of music that I dismissed as a child gained so many layers I had never seen before. Tom Whitman was right.”

Le’s commitment to holding herself to a level of performance in all aspects of her life brought her to the realization that “it was easy to forget you inhabit a body vulnerable to strain and use.” At the end of the first semester of what was supposed to be her senior year, she was involved in her directed creative writing project, her seminar, honors recital practice and composing the piano part of her violin and piano sonata.

Le soon developed tendonitis, a painful inflammation of the tendons that immobilized first her left hand and then her right. Avoiding wrist movement put strain on other parts of her body and her condition “spiraled.” That spring semester, Le had to “pull out of a lot of obligations, which was emotionally damaging,” she said. “I had to face the fact that even though my mind was prepared to do a lot of things my body wasn’t [able] to carry it out.”

Le was faced with the dilemma to either graduate as a course English major in 2007 or to postpone graduation to fulfill her honors requirements. “I ultimately decided that playing my recital was important to my identity at Swarthmore and important to my identity as a musician,” Le said. She finished her English major and delayed graduation in the hopes that her body would eventually heal soon enough to play a recital the following school year.

After about a year in recovery, Le began the struggle of “re-approaching, re-learning and reassessing” her instrument and her technique with Govatos, her violin. At first, Le could only practice a half hour a day, which slowly grew to an hour a day. Eventually, Le decided she would be able to give a recital after she cut part of the planned program.

Although Le originally intended to play some more obscure works that would “shock and disturb to a certain extent,” she ultimately decided on still underplayed but more tonal pieces so as not to alienate the audience. Three composers in her repertoire were Prokofiev, Janacek and Bartok, who all “moved away from conventional harmony in various directions.”

One composer that has gone unmentioned is Le, herself. Le took her first music composition course with Gerald Levinson her junior year. Since Le was hooked on creative writing, she wanted to do the same with music. Le looked to the composers Bartok and Janacek who incorporated folk songs into their works. “Because of the upheaval [in their time], they were looking for something simpler and more at the core of their national and cultural selves,” Le explained.

Le adopted this idea by incorporating a Vietnamese folk song into her original composition. “Both my parents raised me as an American without cultural ties because they didn’t want me to feel like I had to account for a past and cultural ties that I didn’t understand,” said Le, who is Vietnamese-American, “[but] there are elements of their past, despite their best efforts, [that] have seeped into my understanding of the world.”

The Vietnamese melody was from sheet music Le’s father had brought with him from Vietnam that he would ask Le to play throughout her childhood. “I thought about using it [the composition] as a bridge … between what I perceived to be a separate individual self and what is an idea that is tied to my parents’ past that I can’t fathom.” For Le, the piece allowed her to “reconcile a wild and unruly nature with a simpler constant.”

Le is a musician known for being her own toughest critic but she believes that while “technically speaking, the recital was far from perfect … I would say the recital was emotionally perfect.”

“I always said I would view the recital as a gift, with gratitude. Leading into the recital, I wasn’t sure if I could retain that positivity in the face of nerves. For whatever reason, I was able to and was thoroughly happy to be playing,” Le said.

Not only did Le’s technical skill at the recital leave the audience impressed, but they were moved to see how Le’s intelligent spirit and vivaciousness resonated in every note she played. For those who knew Le’s history of hardships, the pieces were all the more touching. Le’s original composition was the most touching piece to hear as the lovingly played Vietnamese melody seeped through the concert hall.

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