Mother to Son was written during my Composition Fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival & School in the summer of 2021. As part of the festival’s collaborative project between Composer Fellows and Fleming Artists, I had the privilege of writing this song for Key’mon Murrah, a rising countertenor star. Upon reading “Mother To Son” by Langston Hughes, I felt an immediate emotional connection with the poem. Although written by an African-American poet, the text did not fail in crossing the cultural boundaries - it resonated deeply with my own personal experiences of growing up in Hong Kong being raised by an immigrant mother and grandmother, both of whom went through life’s incredible hardships. In this song, which could also be sung by a mezzo-soprano, I try to musically highlight the universal theme in Hughes’ poem by blending bel canto style with elements of African-American folk sounds, traditional Kazakh and Cantonese pop music.