04/06/2026
We’re excited to introduce Mu-Xuan Lin, Assistant Professor of Composition in the UC Berkeley Department of Music. Composer (/curator/writer/researcher) Mu-Xuan Lin (林慕萱) (b.1984, Taiwan/USA) defines her life as a quest for an artistic autonomy poetically engendered by both its will and its vulnerability to one’s corporeal experience and to the world one lives in. Having extensive training in the visual arts and creative writing and frequent exposure to theatre, dance, and literature from an early age, and profound influences from the cinema, Mu-Xuan is interested in the montage and the mise-en-scène of contemporary individuals’ fragmented yet interlaced truths, of the confusion of time and place, and of identities construed and broken. She creates with an emphasis on the kinetic formulation and transfer between various expressive art forms or matters with the sonic and temporal one.
Dr. Lin enjoys an international career; her music has been heard worldwide and on SOOND (EU) and ein_klang (Austria) records, and at many festivals and series such as Festival AFEKT (Estonia), Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Innovation Series (Taiwan), and Piano Spheres (Los Angeles). She has worked with Ensemble Proton Bern (Switzerland), Ensemble Adapter (Germany), Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart (Germany), Avanti! Chamber Orchestra (Finland), International Contemporary Ensemble (NYC), Urbanity Dance (Boston), and pianist Vicki Ray among others, and is working with ensemble 3peoplemusic (三個人, Taipei), duo NéMeu (Paris), 20º dans le noir (Paris), and sheng artist Li-Chin Li (Taiwan).
In this first part of our “Meet the Faculty” video, Professor Lin covers some details on her philosophy on composition, what she’s excited for at Berkeley, and what has impressed her about our student population.
Background music: Through The Glass Of Chrysocolla by Mu-Xuan Lin
