Impressions

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.