One summer, Treya, an emerging New York-based songwriter born in Taiwan, had recurring thoughts of California’s majestic redwoods.
“Several times a week they would be in my dreams and I didn’t understand why, but circumstance allowed me to actually go and physically be with those trees,” the 27-year-old said. “And I can’t explain it, but that experience was like a pivot in my path. That’s when everything started, that’s when it just made sense.”
For Treya, who wound up spending a couple of years traveling across the US, nature has proven to be both a means for self-discovery and a metaphorical backdrop for songs that, at their root, are intensely personal stories of identity.
Photo: AFP
Treya was among hundreds of artists who performed in clubs across New York City last week in the 35th CMJ Music Marathon, an annual gathering for the industry to discover rising talent.
Treya is recording her first studio work in New York and Los Angeles, with plans next year for a stint in Taiwan to tour and collaborate with Chinese-language artists.
Treya is adept both at guitar and piano, but her raw, soulful songs are most driven by her voice, mellifluous with a brassy lilt.
On Still Here, which starts gently and unadorned before a captivating crescendo, Treya sings of a journey through both mountains and gray New York streets: “Asking where, where did I come from? Where, oh where, is my home?”
Treya, raised in New York by adoptive parents, said that her trip to the redwoods taught her to pursue her “gut feeling” — including her desire to discover Taiwan.
Despite her pull to the nation, Treya has little musical connection to Taiwan, saying she was more influenced by French artists such as Edith Piaf.
Treya, who said she spent many nights as a teenager watching waves roll onto the beach, studied classical piano for 10 years.
Her teacher would “just sit there and huff and puff,” leading her to quit at age 16, bereft of any emotional joy from music, she said.
However, Treya picked up the guitar and found the opposite dynamic — compared with piano, she knows little technique behind guitar, but she said: “It was the first instrument that I had for myself. There was no teacher involved; there was nobody else involved.”
While Treya has played frequently around New York, she rarely invites friends to watch her, saying she still feels an insecurity.
“Especially in New York, there is so much going on at all times. I’m not good at rejection, so I would rather just not tell people and surprise whoever winds up being in the room,” she said.
“People lack surprises these days. It’s fun to be part of that,” she said.
With the CMJ Music Marathon credited with providing a springboard for stars, ranging from Lady Gaga to R.E.M., many countries, often with support from their embassies, use the occasion to bring out their rising talent.
Treya performed at a Taiwanese showcase along with Soft Lipa, one of Taiwan’s prominent rappers, and Boxing, a reggae-influenced band of ex-boxers of Aboriginal heritage.
Among the better-known artists to perform at the CMJ Music Marathon was John Grant, the 47-year-old alternative rocker from Denver, Colorado, who has enjoyed a career resurgence as a solo artist based in Iceland.
Grant, who performed before an enthusiastic crowd on Saturday at Greenwich Village club Le Poisson Rouge, glided in style from piano faux-ballads to funk, a breadth that — combined with his hearty sense of irony — bring to mind a version of Beck.
Grant recently released his third solo album, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure, whose title song opens with a line he delivers in a startling deadpan: “I did not think I was the one being addressed, in hemorrhoid commercials on the TV set.”
On Global Warming, Grant groans with mock gravity that the sun is “ruining my fair complexion,” but rejoices on how it makes skateboarding boys strip down.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
Many Japanese couples are coming to Taiwan to obtain donated sperm or eggs for fertility treatment due to conservatism in their home country, Taiwan’s high standards and low costs, doctors said. One in every six couples in Japan is receiving infertility treatment, Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare data show. About 70,000 children are born in Japan every year through in vitro fertilization (IVF), or about one in every 11 children born. Few people accept donated reproductive cells in Japan due to a lack of clear regulations, leaving treatment in a “gray zone,” Taichung Nuwa Fertility Center medical director Wang Huai-ling (王懷麟)
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
RSS