Life Designer with Jingyu Chen
Capturing once in a lifetime moment and each encounter is one of a kind and unique. Life designer is looking to genuine and meaningful human connection, and telling candid human stories. In each episode, I will interview an amazing talent coming from all around the world across all different industries. They are artists, creatives, professionals, entrepreneurs, slash everything, and they are all on their journey to pursue their mission with a passion. It's their story-telling about how they become their own life designers! Please feel free to visit my website to find more information: https://www.lifedesignerwithjingyuchen.com/
I am also running my solo podcast ‘Jing Lens’ -- my lifestyle diary . Here I share daily hustle and grind, small joys from my travel and hobbies, exercise routine, self-care practice, and reflection on my personal growth, etc., I consider Jing Lens as my dynamic diary to document and capture evolving and ( hopefully elevating) journey of my lifestyle. Lifestyle is a bit overkill buzzword today but I have always been drawn to this word, spending years and years searching and building my lifestyle. I guess I finally reach this self-validation point to feel may be able to to share some mindset and practice from an ordinary person’s life to provide one possible form of wholesome and joyful living.
Both podcasts are located in my website. My website is like my container where I put my heart and soul to curate . Please feel free to visit my website to check in both podcasts if you are interested. Thank you so much for listening to my podcasts!
Life Designer with Jingyu Chen
Conversation with Musician Zenith (Part One)
Growing up in New Zealand and being the only Asian kid in the whole school, Zenith experienced years of bully at primary school. It led her to develop an initial interest in how the human psychic and mind work, and she set herself up for pursuing psychiatry at a very early age. It’s a choice inherently driven by her intention of helping those struggling inside.
A gay year in Korea and a teaching job over there prompted her to shift the lane, and pivoted to pursue music. She completed the master degree in Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The scope of her music practice is enormous: performing cello, piano, violin, composing, singing, and teaching music ., as Zenith said, music is her life basically. Music fulfils her purpose of living, and secondarily music feeds her to sustain a living. The order can’t be flipped around because that order shaped her as a musician and framed her perspectives towards the world.
When it comes to performing music, Zenith considers it essential to incorporate intellectual pieces of information behind each piece ( a composer’s life, social environment, and political movement at that time,etc., ) into her creative act as supposed to just emoting and feeling her way through the sound. By employing both intellectual and emotional skills, a musician is equipped to deliver an individual narrative in its attached social and cultural landscape. History and human stories, therefore, are documented and archived. I also personally believe that only in this way can music legacy be inherited and evolved through generation by generation
We further address non-transactional value in music, which I consider distinguishes music from all other instrumental forces (economic power, tech power, etc.,) Because music moves our hearts! I can’t think of any other human inventions that can so easily and mysteriously activate and unleash human emotions and feelings!
Music is for ears to hear. As a human being, Zenith is humbling and compassionate in a profound sense that she acknowledges different forms of human living and struggling. Hence she will never project her feelings for music onto audiences. As a musician, her goal is only and always just to share her life passion with the outside world and to send invitations to whoever walks into her musical world. what to take in from a piece of music is absolutely individual but her genuine attempt and efforts to make an emotional connection through sounds will definitely be sensed by all her audiences! On that note, I am one of the recipients. 15 years old me accepted the YoYo-Ma tracks sent by my friend and since then music becomes my lifelong intimate friend.
Zenith’s insight into music musician education for children reveals music intricately interplays with the rest of the world ( art, architecture, fashion, history, science, religion, etc.,) Her revealing reaches my core belief that music goes beyond an exclusive component and isolated being, as well as embodying grand aesthetes that encompass a mixture of human civilization creation.
She not only offers her teaching methodology on technical training but also presents a full rich and enchanting world that sparks a 5 years natural curiosity. She made me believe that a piece can be unpackaged in a way to be linguistically understandable and emotionally relatable to a 5 year old. Music is to some extent exclusive as a career path, but musicians like Zenith reinforced my faith that Music Education plays an instrumental role in preparing children to be better emotionally equipped towards life in general . Music provides a perspective and reality to live a life with infinity.