About this Video
I have known the Spring Ensemble at Washington University in St. Louis since attending my undergraduate there. I am a Chinese international student and so are many of the ensemble members. Initially, I was an avid audience member, touched by their music performances that brought me home to China.
However, in Spring 2021, knowing that the theater on campus ran into some technical difficulties and Spring Ensemble couldn't perform at one of the biggest cultural shows, the Lunar New Year Festival (LNYF), I decided to feature their music to document and remember their beautiful music journey here and beyond.
Creator
Merry May Ma
Creator
Hailed from Shanghai, Merry May Ma is a writer/director based in Los Angeles. As a mushroom-lover dedicated to telling tactile and uplifting stories, she hopes to inspire audiences to “see more, hear more, and feel more” (Sontag, 1964). Her UCLA MFA thesis film, GARDENERS, won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant and Panavision New Filmmaker Grant. GARDENERS explores how seemingly unrelated things, like nano-science and mushrooms, are deeply connected.