Converging Voices: How Faith Nourished Taiwanese Music—From Sacred to Secular with Kuan Yun Huang & Chen Lin Ma

This performance explores the intertwined relationship between church music and secular life in Taiwan, highlighting Taiwan’s historical agency in shaping its own musical modernity. While Western musical traditions entered Taiwan through missionary and educational networks, they were not simply adopted or imitated. Instead, they were reinterpreted, localized, and transformed through Taiwan’s diverse languages, communities, and historical experiences. By presenting popular songs, church hymns, and Indigenous music side by side, this program positions Taiwan not as a cultural periphery, but as a site of creative convergence—where faith, sound, and identity are continuously rearticulated. Kuan Yun Huang is a Taiwan Fulbright Grantee, violinist, and researcher whose work focuses on one-string instruments and world music, with particular interests in Taiwanese Indigenous music and Vietnamese musical traditions. Trained in Western classical music, he engages in cross-cultural performance, research, and education that explore how sound, history, and identity intersect. His work bridges academic inquiry and artistic practice through performance, fieldwork, and international collaboration. Chen Lin Ma is a Taiwanese musician and educator with a background in Western classical music. She is an accomplished pianist and flutist. Ma and Huang are partners both in life and on stage, collaborating closely in performance and education.