Curiosity Piqued

Exploring a culture’s music can be indicative of so many other aspects of day-to-day life in a given community. This interest has always been at the core of how the group formerly known as the Sioux Falls Chamber Music Collective operates. Recently adopting a new moniker that fully embodies this notion of exploration, the newly minted Curious Music Collective emphasizes just that — piquing its patrons’ curiosity with memorable and enlightening experiences.

Lawrence Diggs, Yi-Chun Lin and members of the Curious Music Collective perform Asian Horror Night at DaDa Gastropub in October 2023.

“I think as a group we kind of inspire each other to be more and more adventurous, “said Yi-Chun Lin, Curious Music Collective founder and CEO. “I just feel like as we started taking this journey into different directions, working with different artists, we became more curious artistically and just overall curious about people from different backgrounds, from different ideas with different beliefs.

“Being an artist and a musician, I’m usually surrounded by folks who are very open-minded. I just want to bring out that part of it for others — it’s kind of a luxury. The more we try or the more we encourage ourselves to make a new step, the closer we will be to broadening our worldview. That’s a vision we have.”

This focus on multicultural experiences has been a hallmark of the Curious Music Collective’s repertoire since its founding in 2018. Starting as a volunteer group headed up by Lin, who recognized a desire amongst her fellow musicians to play more music in chamber settings, essentially a conductor-less small orchestra that ranges in size from two to 10 players.

“At the beginning it was purely that people wanted to get together and play music for fun, and then it turned into this more serious thing,” she said. “I started sensing all the creative energy from everybody and especially all the local talented people around me. And so I decided to look into how to become a nonprofit organization to build a more long-term goal and hopefully to be a hub for a lot of artists and musicians — for them to be able to do some creative projects with us.”

Projects by the collective have included hybrid events where dance, food and poetry from many cultures have been enmeshed to better depict traditions, rituals and common themes amongst global experiences. The group recently played as part of the Washington Pavilion’s inaugural Live & Local series, as well as highlighted the lore of Asian horror stories in a recent concert event last fall at DaDa Gastropub.

The Curious Music Collective prepares for its February 2024 performance as part of the Washington Pavilion’s Live & Local series.

“I love horror stories. I listen to so much,” Lin said. “July and August are typically the ghost months in Taiwan. It's like when the gate in the underworld is open, so all the ghosts will flood out and come to our world and kind of mingle. A lot of times these stories are pretty human, because, I mean, ghosts used to be humans as well.”

This fascination with cultural horror stories led to Asian Horror Night, a celebration of music and literature that link to this common theme of storytelling. Frequent collaborator and local poet Lawrence Diggs, a former resident of Japan himself, helped to build a repertoire for the event, which included stories narrated by Diggs and scored by a chamber ensemble that performed Asian folk music.

This sort of accessibility — giving people an entry point to a fine art like orchestral music and poetry — is key to the Curious Music Collective’s mission.

“One of the tactics is definitely creating programs like Asian Horror Night, where we are using stories,” Lin said. “People love stories. So when we have a very strong theme or topic programmed into a performance, then people seem to understand what is going on a lot better. And that has been my approach of just using the music, dance or poetry to make instrumental music or classical music less scary.

“When it comes to classical music, people imagine themselves being in a tuxedo or a dress, they have to act a certain way. But we have been trying to bring more innovative programs so they can react to music however they want. I hope we are giving them a theme to latch onto so they don't feel like they're completely out of place.”

This approachable factor has helped the collective build not only an audience of supporters interested in exposure to cultures they wouldn’t otherwise obtain, but it also has given Lin herself a chance to interact with artists who better understand her own journey.

“I'm an immigrant myself — I'm originally from Taiwan,” she said. “So I had to go through a period of time that I had to learn everything. I went to New York after I graduated from high school in Taiwan. My English was not very good at that time, but I felt a sense of freedom when I got there. I just feel like people were not afraid of being who they are. That was super encouraging to me.

“And now I'm living in Sioux Falls and just feel like it is always very rewarding meeting with people of similar mind. A lot of times for immigrant or refugee people who come from different backgrounds, it's a struggle for us to feel like we need to fit in, so we need to hide our identity. I definitely have struggled through that period of time, and now I feel pretty comfortable with who I am. I think sharing my story or encouraging people to be exposed to different elements from other cultures or from other people, different beliefs or different artistic inspirations is a very healthy thing. And I just think that's what we need for our community.”