As an elementary school student, practicing piano for eight hours a day and posting performances on YouTube were already the norm for Senaida Ng. Now, the Tisch alum and classically trained pianist is a genre-bending EDM artist with sets across North America and Europe.

Ng, who has an undergraduate degree from the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music and a graduate degree from NYU Shanghai’s Interactive Media Arts program, recently began their global tour. With production technology that transforms movement into sound, the performer and DJ takes inspiration from nightlife and rave culture in Germany, where they were one of 24 students to attend the Clive Davis Institute x Berlin program. 

In an interview with WSN, Ng spoke about their growth as an artist, the incorporation of Chinese heritage into their music and the NYU experiences that shaped their career.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WSN: Why did you transition from classical music to electronic music?

Ng: In electronic music, you can make an infinite number of sounds and I was really interested in learning how to do that, so I started teaching myself how to produce. At the time I went into Clive, I was more leaning towards being a singer-songwriter and that really quickly changed after my first year. I decided that pop music is really not interesting to me either, because it’s formulaic and I don’t even like listening to it that much. 

Ng originally borrowed a friend’s DJ console to learn how to mix in their bedroom. Despite limited experience, they performed a solo set at the community radio station Refuge Worldwide. Combined with their long time passion for collecting archival records, including their favorite collection of women electronic pioneers, they continued to share their favorite bits of music through DJing sets for live audiences. 

WSN: Why were you initially drawn to DJing?  

Ng: I didn’t know this whole world existed until I came to Berlin. We went to the clubs and I experienced this euphoria and transcendence for the first time. People don’t care what you look like, who you are, how you’re dancing, and they’re all just there for the music and to create this energy together — it’s so special, and I was so inspired by that and how music can move so many people.

Ng kicked off their tour with a performance called “Like Water, Like Clouds” at clubs and raves in cities across Asia. The performance was first conceptualized as their thesis in a Clive Davis class and includes a 45-minute Chinese calligraphy painting session, where Ng paints Chinese letters with a paintbrush that translates movement into harmonies.

WSN: What was the creative spark behind incorporating Chinese calligraphy into your performance? 

Ng: I chose Chinese calligraphy because in the past year, I’ve been coming back to my own ancestral roots, learning about my family history. Going to Shanghai was such an incredible experience because I finally felt grounded and rooted back in my culture, after being born and raised in North America for so long. I really connected to the people there and wanted to bring that element of my own culture back into this work. Chinese calligraphy is something that I’ve always wanted to do but never did as a kid.  

The class that Ng took was taught by Tisch professor Errol Kolosine, who later served as their mentor. Following Kolosine’s advice, Ng pursued Interactive Media Arts classes, which they later declared as a minor and eventually earned a master’s degree in. Ng also applied to a 12-week music startup incubator run by NYU in partnership with the NYC Media Lab and ASCAP, where they were awarded $5,000 to kickstart a business that blends music and AI. For Ng, AI as a tool for both research and as a “creative collaborator” that can find ideas that haven’t been yet fully explored.

WSN: Why do you integrate music and technology in your work? 

Ng: My dad works in IT and so I always had this interest in technology and computers. I think this transition really did occur at NYU when I was in my first year. One of the classes I took was an elective class for Clive called ‘Are Friends Electric?’ and it was about future technologies. At the end, we had to create a fictional business proposal that applies in the music industry, and I was talking about Neuralink and how you could read brain waves and turn them into words or dreams and speech. I thought, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be interesting if we could imagine sounds in our brain and then have some kind of AI analyze it and turn it into a synthesizer?’

Contact Kaitlyn Sze Tu at [email protected].