Wu, Meng-Han
composer ‧ conductor ‧ singer
composer ‧ conductor ‧ singer
Photo by Jack Bailey
Meng-Han is a Taiwanese composer with a great passion to collaborate with directors, musicians, and game designers. His composition includes music for animation, narrative films, documentaries, video games and performance art. He has also composed commissioned pieces for several choirs.
Unlike many composers, Meng-Han's composition career started in a unique way. Until 2010, he had not had any academic training in scoring or music composition. However, in that year, in order to help his friend's new play for a drama competition, he took on the challenge of composing the music for it. The score turned out to be a great success and was well-received after its debut. It was also nominated for a score award as part of the same competition.
Following his musical debut, Meng-Han began to cooperate with other directors and game designers. In addition to scoring for film and multimedia, a choir piece he composed was awarded in 7th Choral Composition Contest, New Songs in Taiwan in 2015. In 2016, he enrolled in the New York University Music Composition and Film Scoring Master's Program. He received his master diploma in May 2018.
Before Meng-Han came to the US, he took private lessons with Liang-Xiu Tsai from 2013 to 2016. He learned composition from Michael Patterson and conducting from Michael Breaux while studying at NYU. These training experiences enhanced his creativity in composing acoustic music and brought a new perspective to his melody writing by adding electronic and synthetic sound design.
Meng-Han is currently in the US to develop his music career. He continues to experiment with different forms of music while working with many talented artists. As a professional choir singer (Bass II and Countertenor), he sings with different groups to explore the variety of choral music.
Director: Jin Liu
Original music design for documentary.
This story features a 500-year old written language used by women in Southern China. This language was the medium through which local women often expressed the pain and bitterness of their lives. The language was used widely before 1949, a time when women were banned from school. After 1949, girls began to go to school and the language faced extinction. Its appearance in this documentary reveals a previously secret history of local women. While the language is no longer in daily use, it has begun to thrive in a new way.
Director: You-Yun Lin
Original music for short film.
This film features a man's memories of a place in Taipei, Taiwan that he once frequented. After the passage of time, he walks the once familiar street and notices that everything has changed. He feels lost and has nowhere to go.
Director: Meng-Shin Ling
Original music for animation.
An unhappy girl accidentally gets on a bus to a mysterious world. She encounters a potentially deadly situation. What can she do to save herself? And will anyone appear to save her?
Director: Wei-Shiang Cheng
Graphic Designer: Tong-Yi Shih
Original music for a play.
This play focuses on the connection between forgetting, happiness, and the meaning of one's life. It questions the meaning of happiness if a person cannot memorize things that are important to him or her. In addition, if everyday we wake up, and, at that very moment, we pretend something is important so as to fill the void resulting from what we have forgotten, the question arises as to what does “I” mean. And, how could it be possible for us to tell the story of ourselves, or to describe our lives?