Taking advantage of the similarities between the undulating ripples of pentatonic modes often employed in both Chinese and impressionist French music, and between the sweeping drama and exacting pedantry frequently found in both Chinese and Russian music, I have created bi-cultural concerts featuring music from each pair of overlapping traditions. Below are brief synopses and links to concert programs. One sample audio file accompanies each program. More sound examples under the Music tab.
This solo piano concert (with accompanying photography exhibition) juxtaposes Impressionist French and contemporary Chinese music. It connects Ravel's haunting musical response to Aloysius Bertrand's poems with Wang Lisan's poetic and dramatic musical responses to landscape paintings by Higashiyama Kaii. The photographic impressions of my first solo travels in China sit alongside Peter Child's musical creations based on Chinese and Malay songs from my childhood. The program grew out of a field study on contemporary Chinese piano music I conducted in Beijing in the summer of 1997 as part of the MIT Science and Technology Initiative. This concert, and parts thereof, have been presented at venues in Washington D.C. as part of the Embassy Series (1999), in the Greater Boston area, including at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center (2000), at the MIT Lincoln Labs (1998), and at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn (1998), and in Finland (2001 International Conference on Musical Signification.)
Created originally for a joint concert with the Duo Asiatica for the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts Concert Series at Jordan Hall in Boston, this program included the Boston premiere of Chen Yi's Ba Ban, and first performances of Ivan Tcherepnin's Variations on Happy Birthday and selections from Peter Child's Doubles III (composed for EC) outside of MIT. This program, and parts thereof, have been presented at other venues such as Lehigh University (2001), the University of Edinburgh (2002, International Conference on Music and AI), the University of British Columbia (2005, NIME Conference), the University of Southern California, and University of Victoria (2007).
This violin and piano recital was designed in collaboration with violinist TK Wang for the 2007-2008 fellows at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. The concert took place at the then Radcliffe Dean Barbara Grosz's home, Greenleaf House, Like Impressions, it superimposed Impressionist French and contemporary Chinese music, this time for violin and piano. The program combines Debussy's reticent final work with Ravel's bubbly violin sonata, and contrasts these impressionist works with Chen Gang's evocative birdcalls at dawn and sunset in tashkurgan.
Created in 1996 as part of my work in the Advanced Music Performance program at MIT, this program represents my first foray into bi-cultural programming. The concert puts together Medtner's romantic fairy tales and selections from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet with traditional Chinese music transcribed for piano by Li Yinghai and Wang Jianzhong, culminating in a Chinese concert etude by Russian emigre Alexander Tcherepnin.