"I was born in a quiet part of Hanoi in early spring, soon after the Peace Agreement was signed in Paris. As with many postwar children in Vietnam, I learnt about the basic human needs but also about the value of the selfless parental love in most vivid ways. While the living conditions then were not most comforting due to scarcity of food and electricity, I was surrounded by lots of Bach solo violin, mostly in tune, played by my father's students. We lived in a tiny place that always felt secretive to me because there were one front door, one back door but no windows. I, however, was very happy with the world that opened up for me from my mother's bookshelf that would take me from the mystic world of Ancient Greece to the troubled sea of Hemingway via the moon of Stefan Zweig with Japanese plum gardens spread out beneath. The state of being curious as a form of escapism has followed me since.
I have been fascinated with human voice and the rich world of sounds since I was a child so music came naturally as a way of being. Much later on, spending my teenage years in the foreign land of Russia as a student, caught up in the midst of the social chaos caused by the abrupt fall of the Soviet Union, I learnt that music can be one of the way to reach out to others. Music, I realised, can move beyond physical constraints, transcends metaphysical boundaries and yet, it touches and binds us together with the immediacy of sound and time.
For me, music represents the gentle power that does not divide and am grateful for its presence in my life."