I came into the world with a Chinese name meaning Garden of Songs (曲園)—born into the hope of becoming a useful collaborator of the larger collective, the Source of the Song (曲源). I have been trying to live up to that name ever since.
I am Emily Lau: composer, singer, performance artist, teacher, kitchen-person, and maker of community. My work moves freely across music, theater, gastronomy, movement, visual arts, and literature—not because I can't choose, but because the most interesting things happen at the edges where disciplines touch. A strong thread runs through all of it: I honor the people I work with. I make art that brings light to both the delight and the suffering of being alive.
Originally from Hong Kong, I have made my home in the strange and fascinating cultural landscape of the USA. BBC Radio has called my compositions "haunting" and "emotional." I have written for Grammy-winning ensembles, network television, and NPR, and performed on leading new and early music series domestically and internationally. My practice has crystallized into the Lau Method—a process drawing from physical theater, expressive art therapy, Dalcroze eurhythmics, and global performance traditions—most often realized in collective creation with trusted collaborators, each virtuosic in their own right.
I am the founding artistic director of The Broken Consort and the Artistic Director of Big Mouth Society, Portland's new and inclusive music community. Recent commissions include Our Queer Mother, Gabriela, an orchestral/vocal suite at the Kennedy Center, and The Common Opus, a multidisciplinary, multi-city project involving 200+ community members. You can hear my singing on several major labels, including Dorian, Gothic, Reference, and Albany, on projects with Grammy-nominated True Concord Voices & Orchestra, Cappella Romana, and others. I taught voice and coached chamber music at Reed College for seven years and continue to teach from my private studio. I am currently artist-in-residence at Augsburg University in Minneapolis.
A devoted student of culinary and medicinal culture, I conceived and ran Cloud Pine—a dim sum tea house near Portland—as a three-year art project at the height of the pandemic. It began as an act of community-building and became something far larger than I imagined. I have written a book about it with Jesse Ehrenberg, one of my dearest co-conspirators.
I am always cooking something, always steeping something, always in the middle of dreaming up the next project with people I love.