In an interview with Downtown Music, cellist and ’90s kid’ The Wong Janice discusses her love of pop music, her corporate career, and the meditation retreat that led her back to her musical roots. Janice was six years old when she picked up piano lessons, and two years later, she discovered the cello. Her Chinese background led her to music, but she dropped the piano in her teens because it became too difficult to keep up both instruments at the same time.
Janice’s life was heavily classical, and her parents wanted her to play the orchestra because it was nicer for a child to have a more social environment. At thirteen, a chance discovery took her from classical to pop music. When a teacher urged Janice to join a band and play the song ‘Shimmer,’ she learned she had the skill to replicate any song on the cello. From then on, she really started using the cello in pop music, which was her first love.
Alongside that first love, Janice also recalls the ‘first rejection’ that altered the trajectory of her music career. She got an audition with a very famous singer at the time, and after learning that she didn’t have the skill to improvise, she decided to learn how to improvise. In an attempt to excel at what she believed was holding her back, Janice played pop music with different bands, even an electronic dance band. However, around that time, a music teacher she respected told Janice that she didn’t have what it takes to be a solo classical musician.
Soon, things changed in the business, so Janice felt stuck in her life and in her career. Going on a sabbatical, she attended the Vipassana ten-day silent meditation course. There, she discovered that the true’shackles to suffering are our reactions to situations.’ By the end of the ten days, she felt free and had the key to let go of her suffering and unlock her liberation.
Following this ‘powerful’ mindset switch, Janice lost her job and instantly identified the silver lining. She decided to become a music producer, studying engineering and music production at Abbey Road Institute in Amsterdam. Although she initially believed that the one year would allow her to make a career switch, it soon became clear that going from a course to proper music production required some kind of buildup.
Janice took a piece of paper and wrote down all the ways she could make music. She was really into electronic music at the time, so she thought about making music for games, film, and being a session musician. However, she didn’t feel like a composer, so she began crossing things off her list. It was this process of elimination that revealed the option of becoming an artist.
Janice now knows that cello was always her path. She went ahead with the mindset that what the worst that can happen can happen. She did market research and discovered that people listen to cello during quiet activities like in solitude, in the bath, or at the beach.
Connecting the dots of her cello background to her enlightening foray into meditation, she recorded her meditative music album within three weeks. Instantly, her research into distributors led her to CD Baby. For the past year, Janice has been a CD Baby Plus artist, which allows her to submit her music quickly.
After taking a rollercoaster ride to find herself, Janice’s life philosophy is to ‘let go of always chasing more.’ What she’s learned from the meditation course is knowing when to stop looking for things that are bigger and better.
