2025 is the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, or as the country this conflict was waged in calls it, the American War. Within the diasporas that have formed in those fifty years, water has emerged as a significant motif in the art and literature of Vietnamese creatives arounds the world. For the Vietnamese boat people who fled their country in search of a new home, water (the ocean) served as both an endless labyrinth and their temporary sanctuary. In Vietnamese, the word Nước translates to both “water” and “country,” and it is the relationship between those two meanings that is centered in this work. Nước navigates what I view as the contradiction of the Vietnamese diasporic experience while also imagining water as a form of country.

Nước derives its motivic material, harmony, and structure from the song “Biển Nhớ” (“the sea yearns” or “the sea remembers”) written by Vietnamese songwriter Trịnh Công Sơn and popularized by singer Khánh Ly. The two were close collaborators and were central musical figures during the war, particularly for Trịnh’s lyrics, which often explored themes of love, grief, and pacifism. Fragments of “Biển Nhớ” are used as the gestural and textural fabric of the work from which the song’s melody emerges as a cello solo accompanied by violent interruptions from the orchestra. Constantly moving between flowing, interweaving textures and wild bursts of sound, Nước illustrates the culture of mourning and the deep yearning of the Vietnamese diaspora.