Chen Yi and Her Music

ChenYi'sBio/Publication/Bibliography/Contact&Concerts (ScrollDownToTheEnd):

(long version of Chen Yi's bio.)

Composer Chen Yi* (born in 1953, Guangzhou, China)

A native of Guangzhou, China, Chen Yi* was born into a family of doctors with a strong interest in music. She began violin and piano studies with Zheng Ri-hua and Li Su-xin at the age of three. When the Cultural revolution overtook China in the 1960's, she tried hard to continue her music studies, practicing violin at home (with the mute attached). She was sent for forced labor into the countryside for two years and took her instrument along. A positive aspect of this experience was the knowledge she gained of the wider life and music of her motherland and its people.

When she was 17, she returned to her home city and served as concertmaster and composer with the Beijing Opera Troupe. She began, at this time, her research of Chinese traditional music and Western classical music theory under the supervision of Zheng Zhong. When the school system was restored in 1977, Chen enrolled in the Beijing Central Conservatory, where she studied composition under Professor Wu Zu-qiang and British guest composer Alexander Goehr. She continued her violin studies with Professor Lin Yao-ji and began an eight-year systematic study of Chinese traditional music. In 1983, Ms. Chen composed the first Chinese viola concerto (Xian Shi) and, in 1986, the Chinese Musicians Association, the Central Conservatory of Music, Radio Beijing, CCTV and the Central Philharmonic of China jointly gave, in Beijing, an entire program devoted to Chen's orchestral works, when she became the first woman in China to receive the degree of Master of Arts in composition. In 1986, Chen Yi went to the United States for further musical studies.

In 1993, she received her Doctor of Musical Arts, with distinction, from Columbia University, where she studied under Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky. In the same year, Dr. Chen was appointed, through the Meet the Composer New Residencies program, to a three year term as Composer-in-Residence for the Women's Philharmonic, Chanticleer and the Aptos Creative Arts Program, all in San Francisco. In June of 1996, Chen had three sold-out gala concerts at the Center for the Arts Theater, Yerba Buena Gardens, SF, with her orchestral works Ge Xu and Symphony No.2, choral works Set Of Chinese Folk Songs and Tang Poems, and the multi-media Chinese Myths Cantata, presented by the WP, Chanticleer and Lili Cai Dance Company, and received critical acclaims. She then joined the composition faculty of Peabody Conservatory, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (1996-1998). She is the Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor in Composition at the UMKC Conservatory starting in 1998.

Chen Yi is elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. As the recipient of the prestigious Ives Living Award (2001-2004) from the American Academy of Arts and Letter, and the ASCAP 2001 Concert Music Award, Chen Yi has received numerous awards and prizes including first prize from the Chinese National Composition Competition (Duo Ye for solo piano), the Lili Boulanger Award, the 1996 Sorel Medal for Excellence in Music from the Center for Women in Music at New York University, the 1997 CalArts Alpert Award for music and the first Eddie Medora King Composition Prize from the University of Texas at Austin School of Music, the Elise Stoeger Award (02) from Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Friendship Ambassador Award from Edgar Snow Fund (02), Honorary Doctorate from Lawrence University, WI (02), the Adventurous Programming Award from ASCAP (for Music From China), and Kauffman Award in Artistry/Scholarship from UMKC (06). She has also received prestigious fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and commissioning grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Creative Work Fund, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, The Roche Commissions, the Barlow Endowment, the New Heritage Music Foundation, American Composers Forum, the Eastman School of Music, Ithaca College, Peoria University, Miami University, Chorus America, the 6th World Symposium on Choral Music, the Lucerne Music Festival, Carnegie Hall, American Guild of Organists, the Copland Fund for Music, Chamber Music America, the San Francisco Art Commission, the NYSCA, and the Meet the Composer. Her music is published by Theodore Presser Company and recorded on New Albion ('97), Bis ('02, '03, '04), Albany ('04, '05, '06), CRI ('99), Teldec ('97, '99 with Grammy Award), Nimbus ('93, '00), Cala ('95), Avant ('98), Atma ('99), Hugo ('00), Angel ('01), Delos ('04), Centaur ('04, '05), Koch International Classics ('04), Cavalli Records ('04), Eroica ('05), Capstone ('06) and China Record Corporation ('86, '90), among others.

In her compositions, Chen Yi tries to distill from Chinese and Western traditional music the essential character and spirit and to develop materials abstractly in accordance with new concepts. Her orchestral works Momentum, Ge Xu (Antiphony), Si Ji (Four Seasons), Symphony No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, Duo Ye and Duo Ye No. 2, Tu, Caramoor's Summer, and Celebration, cello concertos Eleanor's Gift and Ballad, Dance and Fantasy, organ concerto Dunhuang Fantasy, Percussion Concerto, Piano Concerto, sax quartet concerto Ba Yin, violin concertos Chinese Folk Dance Suite and Spring in Dresden, viola concerto Xian Shi, Chinese fiddles huqin concerto Fiddle Suite, flute concerto The Golden Flute; her string works Romance and Dance, Sound of the Five, At the KC Chinese New Year Concert, Shuo, and Sprout; and her ambitious multi-media work Chinese Myths Cantata, thoughtfully combine the Western orchestral idiom with traditional Eastern pentatonic tonalities. Her octet, Sparkle, is a refreshing expression of glittering passion with magical textures, the sextet, Near Distance, is a meditation on ancient culture and modern civilization, the mixed quartet, Qi for flute, cello, piano and percussion, is a poetic essay marked by dynamic extremes and textural imagination, and the mixed trio, Ning for violin, cello and pipa (Chinese lute), is a dramatic musical presentation with lacerating violence finally moving toward the blessing of souls, compellingly and skillfully drawing together the music of East and West. That, and the desire to create "real music" for society and future generations, is her main goal.

Ms. Chen has been commissioned to compose for Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Sachsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Seattle Symphony, Pacific Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Women's Philharmonic, the Central Philharmonic of China, New York New Music Consort, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Music From China, Chanticleer, Yehudi Menuhin, Yo-Yo Ma, Evelyn Glennie and the Singapore Symphony, the Rascher Saxophone Quartet and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, the Ying Quartet, San Francisco Citywinds, San Francisco Girls' Chorus, Kitka, Chicago a cappella, KC Chorale, Music From Copland House, Opus 21, Philadelphia Classical Philharmonic, New Pacific Trio, Newstead Trio, Metropolitan Wind Symphony, Network for New Music and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Her compositions have also been performed by the BBC Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, New York Philhamonic and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; Iceland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Long Beach, Virginia, Duluth, Honolulu, Cincinnati, South Bend, Oakland East Bay, Peoria, Toronto, Winnipeg symphonies; China National and Shanghai Symphonies, NHK, Japan and Tokyo Philharmonic, Tokyo Metropolitan, Taiwan, HK Philharmonic, Shanghai Radio, Macao Chamber Orchestras; Auckland Philharmonic, Munchner Symphoniker, Dresdner Sinfoniker and Honved Mannerchor, Symphony II, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Aspen, Tanglewood, Cabrillo music festival orchestras, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Berlin Quintet, Haba and Stamnic quartets, Chicago Symphony chamber ensemble, Washington DC Contemporary Music Forum, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, California EAR Unit, CalArts New Century Players, Ensemble 2e2m, EM, Boston Musica Viva, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Dinosaur Annex, Ensemble X, Third Angle, Left Coast Ensemble, New York New Music Ensemble, Earplay, NewEar, Shanghai/Ciompi/Flux/Elements Quartets, BBC Singers, Elmer Iseler Singers, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and many others.

In addition to composing, Ms. Chen has served on the Board of Directors of Meet the Composer and Chamber Music America, on the Composer Advisory Board of the American Composers Orchestra, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, and the International Alliance for Women in Music. She is a member of ASCAP and the American Music Center, and is also active as a violinist in new music and as an ethnomusicologist in Chinese music and is a frequent guest lecturer throughout the United States and China. Since 1991 she has been a co-editor of Music From China Newsletter, an English and Chinese bilingual publication, introducing Chinese music, both traditional and contemporary, to wider audience and scholars.

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(short version of Chen Yi's bio.)

Dr. CHEN YI*, composer (born in 1953, China)

As a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries, Dr. Chen Yi is the recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. She is the Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005. Chen Yi has received bachelor and master degrees in music composition from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, China, and Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University in the City of New York. Her composition teachers have included Wu Zu-qiang, Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky, and Alexander Goehr. She has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Women's Philharmonic, the vocal ensemble Chanticleer, & Aptos Creative Arts Center (93-96) supported by Meet The Composer, and as a member of the composition faculty at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University (96-98). Fellowships have been received from Guggenheim Foundation (96), American Academy of Arts and Letters (96), Fromm Foundation at Harvard University (94), Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Liberary of Congress (97), and National Endowment for the Arts in the United States (94). Honors include a first prize from the Chinese National Composition Competition (85), the Lili Boulanger Award (93), the NYU Sorel Medal Award (96), the CalArts/Alpert Award (97), the UT Eddie Medora King Composition Prize (99), the ASCAP Concert Music Award (01), the Elise Stoeger Award(02) from Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Friendship Ambassador Award from Edgar Snow Fund (02), an Honorary Doctorate from Lawrence University (02), and UMKC Kauffman Award in Artistry/Scholarship (06). She has been appointed by the China Ministry of Education to the prestigious three-year Changjiang Scholar Visiting Professor at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music in 2006. Her music is published by Theodore Presser Company, performed world wide, and recorded on Bis (02, 03, 04), New Albion (97), CRI (99), Teldec (97, 99 w/ Grammy Award, 03), Nimbus (93/00), Cala (95), Avant (98), Atma (99), Hugo (00), Angel (01), Albany (04, 05, 06), Koch International Classics (04), Delos (04), Centaur (04, 05), Eroica (05), Capstone (06) & China Record Co. (86, 90).

* Chen is family name, Yi is personal name. Chen Yi can be referred to Dr. Chen, Prof. Chen, Ms. Chen, or Chen Yi, but not Dr. Yi, Prof. Yi, or Ms. Yi.
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Chen Yi's long concert bio. and work list are on Theodore Presser's website
http://www.presser.com/Composers/info.cfm?Name=CHENYI

Consulting/Purchasing Chen Yi's music:

Theodore Presser Company <http://www.presser.com/Composers/info.cfm?Name=CHENYI>
588 North Gulph Road, King of Prussia, PA 19406
Phone 610-592-1222, Fax 610-592-1229

Daniel Dorff, Vice President, Publishing <ddorff@presser.com>

Judith Ilika, Director, Performance Promotion Dept. (for perusal material <jilika@presser.com> and <promotion@presser.com)

Maria Iannacone, Director, Rental Dept. (for renting orchestral or large ensemble works <miannacone@presser.com> and <rental@presser.com>)

Sales Dept. (for urgently purchasing performing materials in custom prints please call 610-592-1222, ext. 213 or write <sales@presser.com> with information of your first rehearsal)

Chen Yi <chenyi@aol.com>

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Selected Discography

Momentum/Chinese Folk Dance Suite/Dunhuang Fantasy/Romance and Dance/Tu (orchestral music of CY), Singapore Symphony/Lan Shui, Momentum, BIS-CD-1352, released 7/03,
<http://www.bis.se//index.php?op=album&aID=BIS-CD-1352>

Sparkle/As in a Dream/Qi/Duo Ye/Shuo/Song in Winter/Near Distance (chamber music of Chen Yi)
CRI [CD804], released in 2/16/1999. http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/search.pl?sterm=chen+yi&x=9&y=6
Reissued on New World/CRI Recordings [NWCR804] in Feb. 07
http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=17584

Chinese Myths Cantata/Duo Ye No. 2/Ge Xu (Antiphony)/Symphony No. 2 (orchestral music of Chen Yi)
The Women's Philharmonic, Chanticleer, JoAnn Falletta, conductor.
"The Music of Chen Yi," New Albion, NA 090, 2/1/1997.
<http://newalbion.com/NA090/DuoYeNo2.mp3>

Percussion Concerto/Evelyn Glennie and the Singapore Symphony/Lan Shui, Oriental Lanscapes
BIS-CD-1222, released in October 2002, email <info@bis.se>, <http://www.bis.se//index.php?op=album&aID=BIS-CD-1222>

Duo Ye No. 2 for orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Tsung Yeh, conductor
Label: Hugo, 6/00, Hong Kong [HRP7204-2] <http://www.hugocd.com>.

Eleanor's Gift for cello and orchestra, Paul Tobias and Virginia Symphony, JoAnn Falletta, conductor
Label: Albany, released on 4/1/2004, The American Cello, Troy 648.

The Golden Flute for flute and orchestra, Alexa Still and New Zealand Symphony, James Sedares, conductor
Label: Koch International Classics, released on 9/21/2004, KIC 7566.

Duo Ye for chamber orchestra, Singapore Symphony, Lan Shui cond.
Label: Bis, released in Feb. 2004, Dances of Our Time, CD-1192 [EAN 7318590011928]
<http://www.bis.se//index.php?op=album&aID=BIS-CD-1192>

Written on a Rainy Night, Wild Grass, from Tang Poems in Colors of Love, vocal ensemble Chanticleer,
Teldec, 3984-24570-2, released on 5/18/1999, <http://www.chanticleer.org>

Wild Grass, from Tang Poems in Chanticleer, A Portrait, Teldec, 0927-49702-2, 2003.

Baban for piano solo
The Carnegie Hall Millennium Piano Book, published by Boosey & Hawkes, performed by Ursula Oppens on CD [ISMN M-051-246174-5].

Ge Xu for orchestra, Women Write Music / David Snell, Foundation Philharmonic, Catalog#: ACD 22199 , Label: Atma, Dist: Harmonia Mundi, Release Date: 6/8/99

A Set Of Chinese Folk Songs, Arirang, Sakura, sung by Chanticleer
"Wondrous Love, A World Folk Song Collection", Teldec, 16676-2, 1997
Chanticleer (415) 621-5757, fax: (415) 896-1660

Duo Ye/Xian Shi/Symphony No. 1/Sprout/Two Sets Of Wind And Percussion Instruments
Lan Shui, En Shao, conductors; Liu Lizhou, viola; Central Philharmonic Orch of China
China Record Corporation (AL-57), Beijing, 1986. Available at Oriental Culture Enterprises Co., Inc. Chinese Books & Gallery, 13-17 Elizabeth Street. 2Fl, NYC 10013, Tel 212-226-8461

Dian (The Points), Wu Man, pipa
Chinese Traditional & Contemporary Pipa Music/Wu Man
Nimbus Records, UK, (NI 5368), 1993; [NI 7043/4], 1/1/00
PO Box 7746, Charlottesville, VA 22906-7746

Romance of Hsiao and Ch'in for 2 violins and string orchestra
Compassion, A Tribute to Sir Yehudi Menuhin/Ulf Hoelscher & Nachum Erlich, violins, and Karlsruhe Ensemble/Andreas Weiss Cond.
Angel [7243 5 57179 24] London, 6/01

The Points
Min Xiaofen, pipa
Cala Records Ltd., (CACD 0504), UK, 1995.
(800) 879-2252 or (518) 783-9079

Duo Ye for pipa solo
Min Xiao-Fen with Six Composers
Avant (Avan 021), Japan, 7/1/1998

Duo Ye
Shi Shucheng, piano
China Record Corporation (CCD90 088), Guangzhou, 1990. Available at Oriental Culture Enterprises Co., Inc. Chinese Books & Gallery, 13-17 Elizabeth Street. 2Fl, NYC 10013, Tel 212-226-8461

Momentum for full orchestra
1999 Contemporary Chinese Composers Retrospective Concerts, Taiwan Symphony Orchestra/David Chen, 2000 [026189890046], <http:twsymorc.gov.tw>.

Chinese Poems: Picking the Seedpods of the Lotus, The Cataract of Mount Lu
Crossroads, San Francisco Girls Chorus / Sharon J. Paul, Conductor
11/2000, SFGC 0001, www.sfgirlschorus.org

Riding on a Mule, Jasmine Flower, Alishan Song (arr. from A Set of Chinese Folk Songs)
The Palm Tree (from Three Song Dynasty Poems)
Asian Choral Works I, Singapore Youth Choir / Jennifer Tham, Conductor
2000, Singapore Youth Choir, Singapore.

Guessing, Riding on a Mule, Song of Alishan (arr. from A Set of Chinese Folk Songs)
A Cappella Chinese Folksongs, Shanghai Philharmonic Chorus / Lim Yau, Conductor
1997, International Music Management Pte Ltd. Singapore, imusicm@vitnet.com.sg

Feng Yang Song, Mayila (arr. from A Set of Chinese Folk Songs)
On The Wings of Song, Johor Bahru Chamber Choir,
12/2000, JBCC 2000, Malaysia, www.jbcc.cc

As in a Dream for soprano, violin and cello, Six Times Solitute, Contemporary Compositions Recital by Soprano Chen Hongyu, China Record Corporation, 1994 [CCD-94/388]

Romance of Hsiao and Ch'in for 2 violins and string orchestra
San Jose Chamber Orchestra

Wild Grass, from Tang Poems, for male choir
Chanticleer, on Teldec Classics (released on 3/18, 2003, entitled Chanticleer: A Portrait, the 25th Anniversary Collections [0927-49702-2].

As in a Dream for soprano, violin & cello
By Continuum at the International Festival of Contemporary Music on the CD Ilkhom-XX, Selected performances of '02, Uzbekistan, released in '03, by Carol Meyer, Renee Jolles and Kristina Reiko Cooper.

The Spirit of Calligraphy for pipa solo (originally entitled The Pionts)
Jiang Ting, "Voice of the Pipa". Label: M.A.Recordings, ASIN: B0009IB29, 6/10/03, www.marecordings.com

Romance and Dance for violin and piano, by Ho Dong, "Resonance of the Violin III"
Guangzhou, China [ISRC CN-A65-02-562-00/A-J6] Tel. 011-86-20-844622986, Fax 34202496.

Duo Ye for piano solo, performed by Li Fan in Chinese Piano Music
Label: Centaur, released on 7/13/3004, Centaur, CRC 2652

The Points for pipa solo by Huaxia Contemporary Music Chinese Chamber Rnsemble, soloist Chen Yi-Han.
Label; Delos, released on 8/24/2004, Delos 3299.

Qi for chamber ensemble, featured on the CD in celebration of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble Thirty Years of Adventure (1975-2005), released in Dec. 2004, Boston, MA.

Song in Winter, alternative version: Orient and Occident (adapted from Song in Winter) for soprano, guzheng & piano, text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), by Ensemble Roter Phienix (Lan Rao, Soprano; Fengxia Xu-Wagner, Guzheng; Micaela Gelius, Piano <www.roterphoenix.de.tf>), released on Cavalli Records [LC05724] in 2004 <www.cavalli-records.de>.

The West Lake, sung by Chicago a cappella included in Eclectric on Centaur, released in May, 05.

Shuo for string orchestra, performed by Manchester Festival String Orchestra, Ariel Rudiakov, Cond. included in Vision -- Music of the 20th & 21st Centuries, on Eroica, April, 2005 released.

Chinese Folk Dance Suite for violin and orchestra
Included in New Music from Bowling Green, Vol. IV, along with works by Webb, Ran, Adler and Puts, performed by Bowling Green Philharmonic, Cond. by Emily Freeman Brown, Violin Solo by Penny Thompson Kruse, on Troy 743, Albany Records, released on May 1, 2005.

Ba Ban and Duo Ye for piano solo
Released on ABW Classics [ABW 1001] in 2005, Amy Lin Interprets Contemporary Piano Works.

Singing in the Mountain for piano solo
By Thalia Myers, Spectrum 4, 66 miniatures for solo piano, an international collection, Usk Recordings [USK 1227CDD], ABRSM Publishing [LC 14240], 2005.

Mayila and Fengyang Song from A Set of Chinese Folksongs
By University of Utah Singers [UUS-003] 2005.

Ji-Dong-Nuo for piano solo, performed by Jane Solose, included in her solo album Array, on Capstone Records [CPS-8766], 2006.

As in a Dream for soprano, violin & cello, East Meets West, Judith Kellock, soprano & Friends, on Albany [Troy889] 2006.

At the Kansas City Chinese New Year Concert for string quartet, performed by Ying Quartet, in the CD United States: LifeMusic2, on Quartz [QTZ2055], Feb. 2007.

Shuo for string quartet, by the Ying Quartet, in the album Dim Sum on Telarc, released on 1/15/2008 [CD 80690].

Fengyang Song, Mo Li Hua and Diu Diu Deng from A Set of Chinese Folksongs, and Japanese folk song Sakura, Sakura, sung by The Singing Sergeants, in the CD album An American Mosaic ? Folk Songs of Our Diverse Heritage, The US Air Force Band, March 2008.

Ode to the Earth for Daruan and orchestra, Dance on the Silk Road for Zhongruan and orchestra, in the album Xu Yang Ruan solo concert, A Sage of the Bamboo Grove, with China National Symphony Orchestra (cond. Hu Yongyan), May 2008, Huanqiu Audio & Video Company <www.hqavc.com>, Beijing, China.

Wu Yu, Night Thoughts, and …as like a raging fire… (3 chamber works), performed by the Azure Ensemble, included in the CD album: Chen Yi/Karen Tanaka: Invisible Curve, New World 80683, released in 06/2008.
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Selected Chen Yi Profile & Her Music on Radio Programs

Chen Yi's Chinese Myths Cantata, performed by BBC Philharmonic and BBC Singers, cond. by Jason Lai on 1/24/04, and introduced in the Discovering Music programme hosted by Stephen Johnson, in an one hour program broadcast on BBC Radio3 on 3/6/2004. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/discoveringmusic/audioarchive.shtml#chenyi>

Chen Yi & Her Chamber Works performed in the Composer's Portrait series by CY & Musicians from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, conversation with Andrew McGregor at the Victoria & Albert Museum; and Percussion Concerto, performed by BBC Symphony w/ EG, cond. by Yan Pascal Tortelier at Royal Albert Hall at the Proms on 8/19/2003, 1.5 hour program live broadcast on BBC Radio3.

Chen Yi & Her Music, three 30-minute programs hosted by Lin Mo, Radio Free Asia, Washington, DC, 2002/2004. <http://www.rfa.org/content/service/man/audio/kalei0613.mp3>

Kulturen verbinden, Traditionen verschmelzen: Die Musik der chinesisch-amerikanischen Komponistin Chen Yi, Ein Portrait von Heinz-Dieter Reese, Bayern 2 Radio: KlangArt, Montag, 30, August 2004, 21.30-22.30 Uhr, Bayerischer Rundfunk.

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Selected Videography

Sound And Silence (Chen Yi & Her Music)
Chen Yi with Chamber Ensemble in Sound and Silence.
International Society for Contemporary Music, Adamov Films and Polish TV, Paris, 1989.

Overseas Artists (New Concept in Creation)
A Documentary film of Chen Yi
Taiwan Public TV, Taipei, Taiwan, 1991.

Cultural Odyssey (Show #17): Chen Yi & her music
Voice of America/Chinese Branch/Mandarin, 2002.

Chen Yi in America (A Cantonese in New York)
A documentary film of Chen Yi
Guangdong TV, China, 2002/2003.

An Interview with Chen Yi by Jay Stone
China Crosstalk TV, Westone Media, CA, 5/28/2003.

Heaven Above, Earth Below, Chen Yi's Chinese Myths Cantata, CBBC, BBC 2
BBC Philharmonic, BBC Singers, Chinese Weekend, Jan. 2004, broadcast on 10/26/04.

The Points for pipa solo, Lan Weiwei Contemporary Pipa Music Lecture Recital, VCD, CCOM, Beiing Universal Music Video & Audio Publishing Company, Tiantian Arts [ISRC CN-A64-02-550-00/V.J7]

Fisherman's Song, Romance and Dance, Xu Ke (erhu), Wind and Rhythm, XUA Records [XUADV-8002], 2006.

Spring Dreams performed by Chanticleer at the Estonia Concert Hall, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2/10/2006 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK-HwUVxjHs>

Chen Yi's Percussion Concerto (live broadcast)
Mexican National TV, performed by OFUNAM with soloist Ms. Liu Ying in Mexico City on 2/12&13/05, conducted by Zuohuang Chen.

Chen Yi, Music and Dream, the World of Chinese, CCTV, Beijing, China, 2007.

Chen Yi’s Fiddle Suite for huqin and full orchestra, Yen Jie-min (soloist) and Beijing Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tan Li-hua, CCTV, 2007.

Spring Dreams, composed by Chen Yi, sung by PLA Arts Academy Choir, CCTV Choral Competition Gold Medal, 2008, Beijing China.

1977 Class of CCOM (Reunion for Love), Dongfang Satellite TV, Shanghai, China, 2008.

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Selected CD-ROM

Qin Tomb Of The Middle Kingdom
Original soundtrack
The Warner Electronic Publishing, 1996
15BN 1-57304-957-3, UPC 0-70993-00957-1 (Mac)
15BN 1-57304-907-7, UPC 0-70993-00907-6 (Windows)

Spring Festival for middle school wind ensemble, CD-ROM with score & parts <www.bandquest.org/>
University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble, American Composers Forum, HL04001978.

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SELECTED COMMENTARY OF CHEN YI'S COMPOSITION

ABOUT CHEN YI'S ORCHESTRAL WORKS:

[Chen Yi's] invigorating "Si Ji" (The Seasons) received its world premiere on Aug. 26 during the second of the Cleveland Orchestra's three concerts at Lucerne. The new piece draws inspiration from Chinese music but also from other elements of the country's culture, such as poetry, painting and even speech patterns. Four 11th-century poems about, respectively, a lake, a landscape, a mountain and a thunderstorm, form the starting point of "Si Ji," a 13-minute, single-movement work in four parts. Thematic unity is promoted by a four-note motive derived from a Chinese folksong? overall, "Si Ji" has a big-boned confidence that sounded much more American than Chinese, and it should win a warm reception when the orchestra plays it again in Cleveland and New York in October.
George Loomis, MUSICAAMERICA.COM, 8/31/2005

Her 15-minute composition Si Ji (Four Seasons) weaves together delicate webs of sound, different scales and eruptive clusters according to a well-planned dramaturgy. To European ears, this attractive-sounding music gains even more appeal through a certain "Chinese" use of the conventional orchestral instruments. Chen Yi, who is still little known in Switzerland, combines high compositional standards with accessibility in an ideal way. We had the Roche Commissions to thank for this premiere, which was greeted by warm and spontaneous applause. After Paul Sacher?s death in 1999, Roche has continued the tradition of patronage in contemporary music.
Jorg Huber, NEUE ZURCHER ZEITUNG, 8/29/2005

Chen Yi's score, the second of the orchestra's Roche Commissions, salutes nature in all its wisdom, beauty and terror. What makes this Chinese-American composer's music so distinctive is the way she seamlessly weaves Eastern and Western elements while devising sonorities that animate the narrative. "Si Ji" comprises four sections inspired by ancient Chinese poems. The orchestra is a filter through which nature is portrayed as a delicate and furious force. All sorts of instrumental touches -- trumpet fanfares, trilling winds, folksy violin solo, piquant percussion details -- evoke the winds, storms and creatures that inhabit the earth. It's a beautifully realized work filled with enchanting and cataclysmic ideas. Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" exerts sonic influences here and there, but Chen Yi's aesthetic is largely the product of a keenly creative mind. Welser-Most and the orchestra played her piece with fine clarity, and the composer came bounding onstage to acknowledge the audience's gracious response.
Donald Rosenberg, THE PLAIN DEALER, 10/15/2005

Ms. Chen's piece, new to New York City, translates from the Chinese as "Four Seasons," and an unsettled weather report it is. Buzzing strings, rippling mallet percussions, nervous brass figures, big timpani and high-pitched wind chords create lots of thunder, lightning and general instability. Interspersed are Ms. Chen's long singing lines, which negotiate between Western-tuned instruments and Eastern ideas of tunefulness.

Most musical East-West fusions converge in the middle and run unavoidably into Ravel. It is hard to get away from. European instruments and the scales they are constructed to play seem to have a naturally debilitating effect on China's musical vocabulary, softening it into the ravishing cuteness that turn-of-the-century France produced with such skill.

Ms. Chen creates a third musical world, one that looks neither to Europe nor to Asia and yet is a distant mirror for both. In "Si Ji," color becomes a kind of counterpoint, layer added on layer. Rather than circle back on itself in the European sonata-form way, the forward progress is a thoughtfully edited stream of consciousness, one idea leading to the next. Ms. Chen has an individual voice. She was also lucky to have an orchestra good enough to let us hear it at its best.
Familiar Brahams and an Unaccustomed "Four Seasons", Bernard Holland, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 10/19/05

The Cleveland Orchestra's annual Carnegie Hall appearance is a little like a papal visit: The faithful hope to hear some venerable ideas sublimely expressed, and perhaps a path-breaking new homily. On Monday, the orchestra, led by the boisterous but precise Franz Welser-Most, obliged with some duly divine Brahms and a 20-minute burst of freshness by composer Chen Yi, who hails from Guanghzhou via Kansas City.

Her "Si Ji," which means "Four Seasons" in Chinese, is both muscular and minutely shaded. She does not stint on noise, or on explosive weather effects of violent string tremors and volleys of percussion. But this is an orchestra that can wedge a lot of difference in between ppp and pppp, and she leveraged that drama, creating sudden contrasts in tiny shifts of light. The four episodes, based on ancient Chinese poems, have the broad span and tight construction of a mountain trestle. In her style, a delicate flute solo can bear a lot of weight.

Classical-music chinoiserie has been with us for more than a century, long enough to spawn tenacious cliches: plaintive song tunes played by massed violins, extravagant glissandos, temple gongs and wood blocks, allusions to ponds, clouds and calligraphy. Chen Yi belongs less to the exotic camp than to the great tradition of emigre composers.

Just as Erich Wolfgang Korngold's swooning symphonic style was transplanted from Vienna to the soundtracks of Hollywood swashbucklers; just as Arnold Schoenberg's California sojourn begat generations of U.S. modernists; so the fusion of Chinese and Western music has become a distinctively American phenomenon.

Chen Yi is not the only composer born into the Cultural Revolution and bred at Columbia University (her husband, Zhou Long, is another), but she is the brassiest, the one whose music has acquired a kind of heartland toughness.

I have to admit, however, that I often had no idea where "Si Ji" was going, or why. Fluid brushstrokes of rhythm entranced me, then broke off into into a walloping climax. The composer sprinkled the score with moments of dazzling orchestration - an avalanche of trembling strings, a light caress of woodwinds - and quickly moved on, as if too impatient to linger on beauty. The sheer transparency of the Cleveland's performance made the piece's fitfulness more noticeable. Playing this precise does not forgive...
Chinese seasoning yields a great Cleveland dish, Justin Davidson, NEWSDAY, 10/20/2005

"Si Ji (Four Seasons)," a vividly scored 14-minute tone poem written two years ago by the Chinese American composer Chen Yi. Taking inspiration from a quartet of 11th century poems, she frames a set of four distinct episodes, from a rhythmically sharp opening dominated by the percussion to a sparse, evanescent close. The performance, punctuated by eloquent solos from concertmaster Alexander Barantschik and cellist Michael Grebanier, was richly evocative.
Joshua Kosman, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 11/2/2007

"Si Ji," performed this week for the first time by the orchestra, is a brilliant showpiece. Under Gaffigan's assured direction, it emerged a triumph.

The Chinese-American composer made a significant mark in the Bay Area in the early 1990s as composer-in-residence for the Women's Philharmonic, Chanticleer and others. Chen established an original voice early on and continues to write music of tremendous force and vibrancy, infusing Western
forms with the folk idioms and melodic influences of China.

"Si Ji," which had its premiere in 2005 (and became a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2006), offers stunning evidence of her artistry. Inspired by four texts by 11th-century Chinese poets Su Shi and Zeng Gong, the 15-minute score is a kind of compressed symphony, with four distinct sections depicting the seasons. It has both the intensity and originality of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."

Wednesday's rendition opened with a jolting episode for percussion, woodwinds, strings and brass; the second section, which brings music of greater density (and speed), features an angular violin solo, nicely played by concertmaster Alexander Barantschik.

In the remaining minutes, Chen reaches further, creating amazing blocks of sound. Xylophones, harps, string glissandi and Chinese cymbals make themselves heard; an English horn plays a plaintive song. "Si Ji" furiously crescendos, then dissipates in an eerie aftermath.

Gaffigan guided the performance expertly, with an ear to the work's colors and textures. Each section showed rhythmically crisp, unified playing.
Georgia Rowe, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 11/03/2007

"The rhetorical force and dark beauty of Chen Yi's Symphony No. 2 are undeniable....a memorably powerful statement whose emotional and even philosophical impact emerges from carefully crafted musical materials." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"Chen Yi's Second Symphony, which opened the Carnegie program, is a distinguished contribution to [the sound-field] style. It is an ever-cresting surge of slithering bass sonorities, high ghostly string harmonics, filigree woodwind lines, bright splashes of brass, pointillistic flecks of percussion... the work was a feast for the ears, and its strongest images lingered." THE NEW YORK TIMES

Chen Yi's Symphony No. 2 is a dark, pulsing and deeply interesting piece? I was especially impressed by some eloquent passages for mixed percussion - death rattles from the snare drums, followed by the remnants of a chime, repeated again and again in a long and brutal fade-out.
Tim Page, THE WASHINGTON POST

"What's remarkable about the piece [Duo Ye No. 2] is the profusion of ideas and the sophistication of the scoring. East meets West in a series of mammoth outbursts and quiet silky exchanges, and the meeting is congenial." SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINE

"Duo Ye No. 2 for Full Orchestra is a refreshingly original piece combining Western orchestral idioms with traditional Eastern pentatonic tonalities. Although only a few minutes long, it is a thoughtfully conceived composition of youthful, yet not unpolished, expression." NEW YORK POST

"This [Duo Ye No. 2] is far from timid music, and it sent its vivid messages along a sensory hotline to which these particular musicians hotly responded. Ms. Chen, in other words, knows the sounds she can build from an orchestra, knowing too that the Central Philharmonic players share her relish for them." THE NEW YORK TIMES

The program was a grab bag of chamber and orchestral pieces by five prominent composers, including the last two orchestral fanfares from the orchestra's commissioning project. Most fascinating was the West Coast premiere of "Tu (Burning)," a fierce 14-minute outcry by the orchestra's former composer-in-residence Chen Yi.

Written as both a howl of pain in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and a tribute to the New York firefighters who lost their lives, "Tu" takes off with a crash and rarely flags in its unbridled energy. A wailing viola solo (splendidly rendered by Katrina Wreede) takes the spotlight before yielding to passages of abrasive, broad-beamed counterpoint. Women's Philharmonic ends 23 years on passionate, brilliant high note.
Joshua Kosman, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Tuesday, March 9, 2004

The most powerful piece was Chen Yi's "Tu" (2002), in its West Coast premiere; Ms. Chen was composer in residence here once. Dedicated to the New York City firefighters in the Sept. 11 tragedy, her piece proved a powerfully impassioned outcry. (In Chinese tu "could be related to burning, poison and fiery," according to the program notes.)
John Rockwell: Celebrating Women Composers, for the Last Time, NYT, 3/15/2004

Chen Yi's new Ballad, Dance and Fantasy is superior stuff for composer and cellist/collaborator, an extraordinary synthesis of Chinese melodic essence and manic contemporaneity that reaches beyond borders, partakes of anything that comes under the rubric of "music," pauses now and then for moments of sweetness, regains a dizzying momentum and, at a breath-stopping end, simply and wondrously evaporates.
Alan Rich: East Comes West, LA WEEKLY, 3/26/04

It had been the orchestra's intention all along to center the festival on the irrepressibly energetic Chen. She got the major commission. And never one to shy away from the limelight, she decided to write a cello concerto for Yo-Yo Ma, which was given its premiere at the close of a program that also featured a new version of Zhou's lustrous "Two Poems from T'ang" as well as Sheng's brilliant "China Dreams."

Chen's "Ballad, Dance and Fantasy" for cello and orchestra journeys along the Silk Road, progressing not only from China to the West but also from past to present. In the ballad, the solo cello is fixated on folk music fragments from Shaanxi province, the Silk Road's source. The whirling dance movement is Turkish. The fantasy, full of sliding tones and modern rhythmic grooves, slips into what Chen - beaming to the audience in a talk with conductor Carl St. Clair - called the global village.

As soloist, Ma proved his usual versatile and charismatic self -- and ready to return Chen's smiles beam for beam. But in her eagerness to let Ma be Ma, Chen wrote him little that was distinctive beyond all-purpose virtuosity. Rather, it was the orchestra that gave her concerto its character. In the ballad, a softly twittering, sometimes whispering background brought underlying enchantment to Ma's rhapsodic melodies, with dark, low winds deepening the solo cello's resonance. In the dance, conga and bongos buoyed the happy spirit. Even when Ma took off in the global fantasy, the slipping and sliding violins seemed to lubricate his fingers.
MARK SWED: Pacific Symphony shows off Chinese composers: Chen Yi's cello concerto premieres
LOS ANGELES TIMES, Friday, March 12, 2004

It would have been difficult even for jaded ears not to feel a sense of anticipation at the Pacific Symphony's latest concert, Wednesday night in Segerstrom Hall.

There, at the end of the program, stood a new cello concerto, commissioned by the resident orchestra and dedicated to none other than Yo-Yo Ma, the style-hopping polyglot cellist, who would also play it on this occasion. The composer, Chen Yi, was probably unknown to most in attendance, but she had certainly proved herself worthy in the preceding events of this year's American Composers Festival, dedicated to the music of Chinese-American composers.

And darn it anyhow if Chen Yi's concerto didn't live up to the occasion. The 50-year-old composer has written an immediately appealing, colorful and rhythmically vibrant work that we think is going to have some legs. It certainly should be performed widely, and we hope its justly proud commissioners will let us hear it again soon.

Raised in a Westernized family in urban China and a violinist from an early age, Chen became exposed to her country's native music only when the Cultural Revolution sent her to a forced-labor camp for re-education. Later, she solidified her knowledge of both Chinese and Western classical music at the Beijing Central Conservatory and at Columbia University in New York. In her music, she ingeniously fuses Eastern folk music and Western art music in much the same way that Bartok managed his similar fusion. At any rate, one does not need to be Chinese to appreciate her gifts.

In this new concerto, the first movement, "Ballad for the Earth," uses a Chinese mountain song, with its yodel-like leaps and quick ornamental slides and shivers, as the main pitch material. The cellist noodles and cavorts, the orchestra supplies a mysterious teeming aura of soft trills and shimmers, the musicians occasionally called upon to (literally) whisper and utter indecipherable phrases.

The merry second movement, "Dance on the Silk Road," introduces a hop-along 7/8 meter, in medium tempo. A pair of bongos and a conga drum, placed beside the cellist, sustains this steady groove. The tightly wound cello line, peppered with little ornamental curls, sounds Middle Eastern. Tuneful, brightly harmonized asides are inserted by the orchestra, cheerfully orchestrated for pizzicato strings and piccolo.

The ensuing cadenza turns dissonant and strenuous, but soon the sweetness of the "Dance" is restored and the orchestra adds a little epilogue.

In the quickest tempo yet, the final "Fantasy for the Global Village," despite its title, is the least folksy. The orchestra gets into a lively game of repeated notes "rat-a-tat-tats" that the cellist can't help but enter into. He keeps busy with his own perpetual-motion sawing, too, however, and the whole thing makes a slow and steady crescendo, almost "Bolero"-like in its mesmerizing increase. Jazzy remarks are added by the brass - they swing. A big whomp and the whispers return, and the cello evaporates into ether.

"Ballad, Dance and Fantasy" is brilliantly and intricately orchestrated in the contemporary manner, but its folksiness as well as its sense of drama make it compelling even on first acquaintance. Ma played the work with his usual passion and virtuosity, apparently abetted (though not audibly) by amplification. Carl St.Clair and the orchestra had the work comfortably under their fingers and supported delicately and athletically, as required.

This not-so-easy piece was greeted with a standing ovation by a crowd that had found it easy to sit earlier in the evening. Never underestimate star power in getting a new piece across.

Timothy Mangan, Ma in harmony with concerto, Review: Chen Yi's new work for the cellist proves a compelling addition to the repertory, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, Friday, March 12, 2004

"I'm not sure if I grasped the form of Chen Yi's Ballad, Dance, and Fantasy, which Yo-Yo Ma and the Singapore Symphony played at Lincoln Center last night, but the brooding first movement contains some of the most fantastic orchestral combinations I've heard in years: solo cello over deep winds, soft string glissandos and harmonics, whispered chants from the percussion section..." Alex Ross, THE NEW YORKER, 3/4/2005

"In the program's two inner pieces, Western orchestral style greeted Chinese sensibilities. No expense seems to have been spared to show this music off. Yo-Yo Ma was the cello soloist in Chen Yi's 'Ballad, Dance and Fantasy,' and Gil Shaham played the violin in "The Butterfly Lovers," composed collaboratively by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao in 1959. The Ma-Shaham appearance represented a high-end parcel of musical real estate.

Chen Yi's music is about storytelling and theater, and a search for striking and original effects. Mr. Ma's long, overarching solos are the storytellers here. There is bent intonation, intentional harshness of bow attacks and swooping portamento - all in imitation of traditional Chinese stringed instruments.

Orchestra players whisper, stringed instruments scurry, the high and low possibilities of winds are tested, and timpani explode like cannonfire. There are also moments of big brass and soaring violins quite in the style of the "Don Juan" music that came before. Germanic ideas of construction and development have little place here. This is a narrative bustling for attention, using orchestra sound as its stage and props.
Bernard Holland, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 3/4/2005

Describing Chen Yi's concerto, titled 'Ballad, Dance and Fantasy,' Shui uses the phrase 'back to the future.' Ma echoes this, saying, 'Chen Yi's music sounds both modern and ancient. She knows folk music from across China, as well as all the contemporary techniques. So, the concerto will be speaking a current language, but then have the cello sound like an old Chinese instrument, wobbly and strange. Her music manages to sound both authentic and unexpected, which is what you always want from art." THE STAR-LEDGER, NJ, 2/25/2005

Ma's work with Yi's beautifully integrated score [Ballad, Dance, and Fantasy], which was written in 2004 and sounds neither Eastern nor Western, but some new hybrid, was magnificently communicative.

Yi's piece, which mixes Chinese and Mongolian folk material with Western symphonic writing, is just the kind of cultural melt that Ma has been promoting with his multi-year Silk Road Project. The opening movement gives the cellist a solo line inspired by an old Chinese mountain song -- willowy, winding and introverted -- against a backdrop of tremolo strings, softly whispered chant-like syllables spoken by the orchestra musicians, and a lovely interplay of soloist and low wind instruments.

Equally haunting, but in a more jovial mood, the second movement puts the cello side by side -- literally on stage -- with bongos and conga drum, juxtaposing a jaunty cello line with more Western-sounding seesaw rhythms and high winds used as accents. There's a devilishly difficult cadenza, which had Ma sliding double stops, but also plucking strings and bending pitches -- very interesting and convincingly executed.

The final movement builds on this spirit, giving soloist and orchestra Western-style repeating motifs, but culminating in a soft, high return to the winsome folk tune with the solo cello getting the last, gentle musical word. In all, the work is inviting, colorful and relies as much on development of thematic material as it does on the pure aural sensation of layering orchestral texture." Willa Conrad, STAR-LEDGER, 3/3/2005

"The most generous ovations were not for the musicians - not even for the celebrity tag-alongs Yo-Yo Ma and Gil Shaham - but for the composer Chen Yi, whose cello concerto Ballad, Dance, and Fantasy had its local premiere.

She belongs to a cohort of Chinese-born composers who weathered Mao's Cultural Revolution, then trained in Beijing's resurgent conservatory and were brought to New York by the Columbia University eminence Chou Wen-chung. The result is an emigre style, a fusion of nostalgia, Chinese folk music, obsessive craftsmanship and theatrics.

In the first and most absorbing movement of Chen Yi's concerto, the cello (which Ma played with characteristic passion and finesse) declaims a basso soliloquy against a backdrop of orchestral brocade. Knowledgeable listeners may discern the folk music of Shaanxi province, at the eastern terminus of the ancient Silk Road.

But nobody could miss the dewdrop-and-dust evocation of a landscape, or the sense that this piece represents an act of national pride. Chen Yi is recapitulating the efforts of Russian, Finnish, Czech and Hungarian composers of a century ago and more, importing peasant tunes and rhythms into the concert hall as a way of infusing refinement with authenticity. Yet there's something deeply American, too, about the piece's natural embrace of styles, especially in the second movement's dance, in which Copland's big-sky jauntiness makes an appearance in Chinese dress." Justin Davidson, NEWSDAY, 3/5/2005

"I know the piece [Ballad, Dance, and Fantasy] I'm playing is kind of an amazing piece. First of all, it's written by a living composer Chen Yi, a woman who teaches in Kansas City. She is both a musician -- she plays the violin, and she plays other instruments -- and she is a wonderful composer... So just for purely selfish terms, I love when somebody writes in the way that you feel is instrumentally good.

The other thing that I really love about Chen Yi is that she's really incredibly well grounded in a number of different traditions. She has great chops for writing contemporary music. She also knows many traditional Chinese styles, which, by Chinese, I don't mean just pentatonic scales. But rather in the larger sense, you know, like the west part of China has a lot of Turkish sounding music. The second movement actually has a lot of those beats which really sound like Turkish music. And it's not an imitation of Turkish music. It's really the music that people play in that region.

In the beginning, it's sort of like the beginning of the Earth. She actually makes the cello sound like a very ancient stringed instrument with really wobbly sounding, but again you're saying, 'OK, this sounds very contemporary, but it actually is a very ancient form of expression.' The way you sometimes look at Picasso, that somehow things can both be very old and very modern at the same time. I think she has that ability."
Yo-Yo Ma, in an interview with John Soltes, WEEKEND WARRIOR, NJ, 2/25/2005

The Chen Yi piece [Symphony No. 3], a Seattle Symphony centennial commission (underwritten by Wah and May Lui), is a dazzler. Chen's Symphony No. 3 is subtitled "My Musical Journey to America," and it tells of her historic culture (in the movement called "The Dragon Culture"), her arrival in America ("The Melting Pot") and her vision of the future ("Dreaming").

Technically assured and full of surprising sonorities, this symphony brings together Eastern and Western melody and harmony with some imaginative and effective scoring: some wonderfully growly contrabassoon (Mike Gamburg) and ascending harps and winds that sound Messiaen-like. Chen was in the audience to receive a very warm reception.
Melinda Bargreen, Symphony embarks on energized 'Journey', SEATTLE TIMES, 3/20/2004

A new work doesn't always succeed at first hearing, but Chen Yi's 21-minute Symphony No. 3, "My Musical Journey to America," given its world premiere by the Seattle Symphony Thursday night, is full of interest and enjoyable to hear.

Her first movement, "The Dragon Culture," is pictorial, of the same genre as Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" with its lively quirkiness, vitality and fun. Brass and winds illuminate all sorts of brief characterful moments, with the strings mostly acting as broad strokes of color-washed background.

Chen uses skilled imagination with instrumental timbres -- growling brass, shrill flutes and trickling harp among them -- and the whole movement built up a feel of old rural China, dragons and all.

The other movements are shorter. The second, "The Melting Pot," a fusion between East and West, marvelously juxtaposes moments, such as one with hushed creepy-crawly pizzicato from the basses and soft clacking like finger cymbals from the percussion, followed by a flash of jazz rhythms, strings again providing atmospherics. The last movement, "Dreaming," is of the future, and is more amorphous and less successful than the others.

The Seattle Symphony gave an excellent performance under music director Gerard Schwarz, and the composer was on hand to receive generous applause. The piece was commissioned by Wah and May Lui for the Seattle Symphony Centennial.
Philippa Kiraly, Symphony takes a wonderful 'Journey', SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 3/20/2004

"Imagine my surprise when hearing the 'Symphony No. 3, My Musical Journey to America' by this season's Composer in Residence, Chen Yi. Written for large orchestra with lots of percussion, Yi's work was a delight in every way. While full of gentle dissonances and not melodic, it was superbly orchestrated, thus allowing us to hear all the fascinating ideas and totally new sounds within its complex textures. Listening to its three movements was like watching dancers executing moves one has never seen before.

It is not hard to write a complex orchestral mess, full of self-indulgent busyness. The hard part is to make it all transparent so that all those notes count and have some effect on the audience other than confusion and ultimately boredom. Dr. Chen worked this miracle with a supreme mastery of the orchestra. I would not attempt to detail the work on first hearing other than to say it was great fun to listen to. Everything had personality, warmth, and a sense of joy. It made you want to get to know this piece through repeated hearings. Dr. Chen's bubbly personality (as she ran down the aisle to accept the ovation of the audience) also made one want to get to know her better.

Gerard Schwarz and the SSO gave Yi's work its due, seeming to find its rhythmic and sonic complexities less difficult than they seemed."
-- Surprise! A wonderful world premiere at Seattle Symphony, by Rod Parke, SEATTLE GAY NEWS, 3/26/2004

[about Fiddle Suite for huqin and orchestra performed by Singapore SO & Xu Ke at the Berlin Concert House] In its entirety, there was an unmistakable Asiatic idiom -- an astonishing musical language that was at times groaning painfully, at times whispering, or stridently loud and buzzing, but on the whole gleaming with style. The wild volcanic dance at the end had thrilling passages, but nevertherless was also quite fascinating in its own right. The audience in the concert hall had every right to be animated in response.
Eckart Schwinger, Tagesspiegel Online Dienste Yerlag GmbH (Daily Mirror Online Publishing Pte Ltd)

"Chen Yi explores sophisticated dimensions in sound... [about the Fiddle Suite for Chinese fiddle and string orchestra], the tartness, the asperity were unapologetic, the marshaling of events shrewd, the orchestration masterly... An extraordinary ear, a formidable talent, an original - how good to have made the acquaintance of Chen Yi." THE BOSTON GLOBE

Chen Yi's "Fiddle Suite" is delightful; Chinese melodies go into Western harmony and counterpoint, and Western instruments imitate Chinese timbres and attacks.
Richard Dyer, THE BOSTON GLOBE, 10/15/02

Fiddle Suite for Huqin (from the erhu family) and String Quartet, composed in 1997 by Chen Yi, a latter-day, Chinese-American Bartok, whose ingenious works seek to reconcile Chinese melodies and modes with Western harmonies and counterpoint. In this work, as in most of Ms. Chen's music, the instruments mimic the contours and patterns of Chinese speech, and the two cultures march in step to her kinetic and inventive rhythms. Anthony Tommasini, THE NEW YORK TIMDS, 1/8/2005

[about Chen Yi's The Golden Flute for Flute and Orchestra] "...truly delightful and substantial flute concerto... Although the idiom of the concerto is firmly rooted in the present, the inspirations are the sounds of ancient Chinese wind instruments, and the piece grows organically from the rootstock of pure Chinese folk music. .. It is a pleasure to welcome this important new work to the flute repertoire."
Leslie Sheills, Music Reviews, PAN MAGAZINE, June 2000

"The flute soloist, Donna Orbovich, captivated the audience with her tongue tricks and ease in freeing pitches from Western constraints. [In her The Golden Flute], "Chen showed brilliance in mixing brass passages and loud orchestral thuds with the solo flute." NEWS-TRIBUNE, DULUTH, MN

"But there is more musical substance in Chen Yi's 'Golden Flute', a richly colored evocation of the Chinese bamboo flute, for all its dramatic timidity, stays longer in the listener's memory. "
-- CD Review, Joshua Kosman, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 11/7/2004

"Chen Yi's work, The Golden Flute, is a sturdy composition with moments of intense color."
-- CD Review, Ken LaFave, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 11/7/04

"She (Alexa Still, flute soloist) also excels in the lyricism and virtuosity of Yi's concerto [The Golden Flute]."
CD Review, Robert Baxter, THE COURIER-POST, 10/17/04

"Of the three works, Chen's is by far the most original. There is a subtle co-mingling between Eastern and Western idioms in 'The Golden Flute,' which gives the three-movement work its unique flavor."
CD Review, Edward Reichel, DESERET MORNING NEWS, 10/21/04

"Chen Yi's flute concerto is in three movements and synthesizes Chinese traditional music with western idioms"
CD Review, John Sunier, AUDIOPHILE AUDITION REVIEW, Nov. 04

"Most impressive of all is the shimmering tone and pure expressiveness she (Alexa Still) gives to Yi's adventurous three-movement concerto [The Golden Flute]."
-- CD Review, Brad Weismann, COLORADO DAILY, 10/29/04

"The Golden Flute by Chen Yi successfully highlights the sound of traditional Chinese wind instruments, and that country's traditional music in combination with the sophisticated modern instrument, in a three movement concerto. Highlights here are the variations in the first movements and the expansive solo cadenza in the Finale."
Peter Williams , HAWKE'S BAY TODAY (New Zealand), Music Notes Column, Dec 15, 2004

[On The Golden Flute] "Chen Yi is a Chinese composer with experience in both Chinese traditional music and European Art Music. She smashes the two worlds together in a way that reveals deep knowledge of both- an unusual skill in a day and age that celebrates musical and so-called cross cultural efforts of questionable merit. While others are dilettantes at best, Chen Yi shows that she knows both worlds from years of study and careful listening. Still's rendering of this pieces should convince even the most skeptical that musical syncretism is actually a good idea." AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE

"Anyone who doubts Still's dumbfounding technical ability or complete tonal control should hear any part of Chen Yi's Golden Flute of 1997. Still creates a rainbow of colors within the range we might call 'beautiful'. You just won't hear better-sustained flute playing, on disc than this, or more subtle, characterful phrasing: real, warm, communicative musicality. Chen Yi's quarter-hour concerto is another Galway commission, and this is its first recording: confident orchestration, shimmering tonalities, and a beguiling palette of emotional and expressive gestures for the flutist, some derived from Chinese melody, or an evocation of the traditional instrument, the xun."
Paul Ingram FANFARE MAGAZINE Jan/Feb 2005

"Cellist Paul Tobias shone with the commanding presence of the drama's star actor. His powerful tone, kinetic charge, and mastery of the score's clear musical purposes added up to a bravura performance. The music moves in gigantic waves with progressively higher crests. With each crest, the orchestra suddenly falls away, and the cello as protagonist begins the next leg of the journey to the higher crest. Chen Yi's clarity of formal purpose is matched and supported by the brilliance of her orchestration. "Eleanor's Gift" is a stunning work with an exhilarating sweep to it. The orchestra took obvious pleasure in rendering this highly successful new score."
Richard Festinger, SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE

"Yi's concerto is called Eleanor's Gift and is 'he challenging journey to a worthwhile goal'.It's in one 15-minute movement of much expressive beauty and evocative sounds in the orchestra, above which the cello soars to great effect. The 'get our and stay out' ending is subject to interpretation. Sounds to me as if the journey ain't over yet."
David Moore, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, Sept./Oct. 2004

"Another recently received CD is relevant to SFCV because the featured cellist, Paul Tobias, had his musical upbringing in the Bay Area, living and performing in San Francisco, studying in Berkeley with the late Margaret Rowell, one of the great cello teachers. Also, he gave the premiere of one of the three concertos on this disc, Chen Yi's Eleanor's Gift (1999, Albany Records TROY648), in San Francisco with the late Women's Philharmonic. That work, honoring Eleanor Roosevelt's role in gaining passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations, was commissioned by the New Heritage Music Foundation. The New Heritage "promotes the creation of works inspired by persons, events and ideas central to history," and Tobias has been artistic director since its founding by the philanthropist, the late Harry D. Offenhartz.

The cello is the protagonist of Eleanor's Gift, sounding almost continuously from the solo rhapsody at the beginning, through engagements with the families of orchestral instruments, with considerable percussion drama that reflects in style, the music from Yi's homeland, through to a lengthy meditation and a final triumphant affirmation. With or without program note suggestions, the consideration of a program guiding the scenario and emotional profile of the work is almost unavoidable. The cello has great things to say, and its voice is explored to the full, given every chance to sing and soar, with eloquence, passion, the melodic lines wide ranging. Tobias is masterly throughout. It's a stunning performance, and JoAnn Falletta, conducting the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, gives the score full value.

Remarkably, in its style, Chen Yi's score is really mid-20th-century American, not in the least partaking of the musical ideas and experiences of the past 15 to 20 years. It would be at home with Barber, Diamond, Schuman and their peers: direct, showy in its coloring, evenly paced harmonically, and definitely with a big, outgoing rhetoric. It's good to have such a concerto in the repertory, a big vehicle for big players."
Robert Commanday: The American Cello, 7/20/04, SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE

"[Chen Yi's Percussion Concerto] was Western-classical in structure, shape and physical orchestration but Chinese enough in flavour and content- given the stunning presence of Scottish soloist Evelyn Glennie." THE STRAITS TIMES, Singapore

"The National Symphony Orchestra's 'More Drums Along the Potomac,' a festival built around the many talents of percussionist Evelyn Glennie, ended Saturday night at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall... brought a major and fiery new score by Chen Yi to America for the first time... [In Chen's Percussion Concerto] The orchestra is used subtly, the references to Chinese opera are well integrated into a score tailored for Western musicians and instruments, and the work builds to a powerful yet complec climax. It is poetic music in which sounds exotic to Western ears are deployed without their exoticism being advertised."
Philip Kennicott, WASHINGTON POST, 10/8/2001

Chen Yi Percussion Concerto (review of CD "Oriental Landscapes" BIS CD-1222. Evelyn Glennie, Percussion, Singapore Symphony, conducted by Lan Shui):
"For the first two minutes there's the astonishing range of sounds made by a collection of traditional Chinese gongs, and when the orchestra enters it feels effortlessly oriental." Andrew McGregor, BBCi music

[about Chen Yi's Percussion Concerto] Most rewarding is Chen Yi's concerto, which boasts her trademark fusion of Chinese and Western elements. Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, 3/16/2003

"...an extraordinary Percussion Concerto... refulgent with lush Chinese romanticism... programmatic and evocative... and a solo percussion cadenza whose phusical and aural gymnastics defy description... The BBCSO seemed to relish every moment of it all." Hilary Finch, www.timesonline.co.uk, 8/21/03

[about Chen Yi's Percussion Concerto] "...a mixture of western and Chinese percussion instruments against a full symphony orchestra. And, ...it works: Chen Yi creates a genuine vesceral quality and the Chinese percussion instruments have a real function within the otherwise western orchestration rather than being blandly superimposed. Oriental scales colour the music but don't define it." Erica Jeal, THE GUARIDIAN, 8/21/03

[about Chen Yi's Percussion Concerto] "...the effect was exhilarating; Chen Yi clearly knows how to bring Western and Eastern modes into meaningful dialogue." Nick Kimberly, EVENING STANDARD (London), August, 2003

[about Chen Yi's Percussion Concerto] "The 1998 composition, in a welcome West Coast premiere, is a global feat of dual virtuosity. Evelyn Glennie, the famed Scottish percussionist who commissioned the concerto, rises to every feat of speed, dexterity, dynamic control and chromatic complication this three-movement score by the Chinese-born, American-based Chen demands. Beneath all its whirring special effects and allusions, Chen's concerto offers a richly engaging musical experience. In shimmering surges, intuitively crested waves and sudden eddies, the piece pulls the listener along. There's kind of tidal force to the piece, a perpetual and varied connection between its jittery, storm-tossed surface and a deeper movement... The piece spins the temperaments and timbres of East and West together without distorting them." Steven Winn, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 10/24/2003

"The fun of the evening was thus pretty well concentrated in the final work, in its Canadian premiere, a flashy and colourful Percussion Concerto written for the brilliant Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie by Chinese composer Chen Yi. Chen has designed a striking visual as well as aural piece for a large battery of tuned and untuned percussion, all inspired by the arts of the Beijing Opera, in which she formerly played violin. In addition to the highly choreographed physicality of Glennie's performance, the middle movement requires that she speak, while still playing, a long dramatic poem in Chinese, in the exaggerated inflections of the opera. We had no idea what the words meant (no translation was supplied) but even so, the sonic effects were riveting. The diminutive composer, who came on stage for the ovation, was obviously thrilled with the performance."
Ken Winters, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Toronto, Canada, 4/3/2006

"...Antiphony [Ge Xu]... its vibrant energy and imaginative depth are unmistakable." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"Ge Xu (Antiphony) is richly affirmative, a feeling that is difficult to convey without sounding facile or simple minded. The music is Chen Yi's own, but there shines through it a spirit that Haydn, Mazart, Rossini, and Dvorak would recognize immediately, and they would smile the way the rest of us did."
Richard Dyer, THE BOSTON GLOBE, 10/15/02

"Yi's Chinese Folk Dance Suite, a violin concerto with the concertmaster Terrie Baune as its impassioned soloist... The three dance/rituals that form the core of the work are cleverly chosen both to create maximum contrast with each other and to match the traditional divisions of the concerto." Michael Zwiebach, SFCV, 3/13/2001

"Once the performance began, her music spoke eloquently for itself. 'The Chinese Folk Dance Suite' is a beguiling example of Chen's unique gifts; a three-movement violin concerto in all but name, the work is inspired by popular folk songs and dances of the composer's homeland, but the work's endless melodic invention and vibrant orchestral writing are entirely her own... The beauties of the fluid, 22-minute suite were readily apparent. Once again, Chen has given the orchestra -- and the world -- a scintillating new work, ...
Georgia Rowe, CONTRA COSTA, 3/12/01

[about Chen Yi's The Chinese Folk Dance Suite] "In three movements for solo violin and orchestra, she channels different folk traditions of her homeland into a zesty new creation. In the work's most imaginative stroke, Chen Yi strings a beautiful violin melody over a piquant rhythmic mesh of vocalized syllables from the entire orchestra -- the only instrumental sounds other than the soloist's are a few brief jangles from the percussion and the occasional cello pizzicato. The two outer movements, though more straightforward, are nearly as arresting..." Joshua Kosman, SF CHRONICLE, 3/12/01

"Chen Yi is becoming the Amy Tan of the symphony world. Like the Bay Area's beloved novelist, Chen weaves materials from her Chinese homeland into musical tales that compel. Chen's works are on the surface easy to respond to, the way good writing is easy to understand. But the music belies a structural ease and an assurance that combines ideas -- and instruments -- central to a Western orchestra with colors and sensibilities of the ancient civilization from the East. Chen's 'Chinese Folk Dance Suite,' for solo violin and orchestra is especially easy on the ears without slipping into the ingratiating." Lesley Valdes, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 3/12/01

[about Chinese Folk Dance Suite] "The work's eastern themes and rhythms, at first difficult to grasp, became intelligible with their subsequent iterations and variations. 'Lion Dance,' the first of three movements, bustled with the energy and high spirits of a Chinese festival... The work's most fascinating movement, 'YangKo,' featured orchestra members mimicking percussion sound vocally instead of playing their instruments...[Terrie] Baune's violin, floating above the surging chant, elegantly presented the movement's fanciful arcs and curlicues. In the final Turkish-flavored dance, 'Mukam,' Baune sparkled in an impressive cadenza, full of high-velocity runs and muscular double stops."
Phyllis Rosenblum, SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL, 4/8/03

"Chinese Folk Dances" [sic] is at once very Chinese in mood, yet very Western in orchestration and structure. [In the 2nd movement, the orchestra] vocally produced a throbbing beat somewhere between the vocalise of a Philip Glass piece and a soft rap number. Setting off the solo violin in this way was most effective. Even with the orchestral conclusion, the violin was not overshadowed, but shone through brightly right into the final, big round of applause. Richard Lynde, REGISTER-PAJARONIAN, Watsonville (CA), 4/10/03

[about Chinese Folk Dance Suite] "...rugged and earthy...It proves that good music can be scored for the most unusual instruments in a charming, rhythmically complex work."
Delonda Hartmann, MUNCIE STAR PRESS, January 24, 2005

"[Chicago Symphony Orchestra] assistant concertmaster Yuan-Qing Yu offered a stirring, sweeping account of a movement from Chen Yi's characteristically evocative Chinese Folk Dance Suite for Violin and Orchestra."
Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 16, 2006

"The rite (ceremony) begins, slowly the music sets in, which imitates the Chinese instrument Suona and Sheng. The piece with the title 'Praying for Rain' gets faster and faster. The moment intensifies, the runs and motives get wilder, more urgent, until the long anticipated rain sets in. 'Ba Yin' (the eight sounds) is the name of the newest composition by the Chinese born Chen Yi, who lives in the USA. The world premiere was performed on Saturday night by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and the Rascher Saxophone Quartet, under the ears and eyes of the visibly enthusiastic composer.

The lifelong study of traditional Chinese music leads Chen Yi to settings of Chinese melodic structures. Sounds of tradition instruments are imitated and received a highly virtuoistic interpretation under the guidance of Dennis Russell Davies. The second movement of the 20-minute concerto for Saxophone Quartet and String Orchestra is touching in its simplicity. 'Song of the Chu' conjures up far away lands and old times. The finale 'Shifan Drums and Gongs' is highly expressionistic, the percussive elements reminding of Stravinsky's Sacre, but still having their own expressive power, which the Rascher Quartet and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra bring to a perfect interpretation."
Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra: Enthusiasum for Chen Yi, Von Markus Dippold, STUTTGART DAILY, Oct. 30, 2001

"That left the opening selection, Chen Yi's 'Momentum' (1998), as the most rewarding part of the concert at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. Whatever overemphasis the orchestra's music director may have imparted here was lost in the excitement of hearing a brilliant, appealing new work.

Chen Yi, whose music was a welcome staple in the Bay Area during her 1993-96 tenure as composer-in- residence for Chanticleer and the Women's Philharmonic, continues to find deft and exciting ways of combining Chinese and Western musical traditions.

The 12-minute 'Momentum,' written for the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, is a formally diffuse but endlessly engaging showpiece for the entire orchestra. The opening piccolo solo (brightly delivered by Mimi Carlson) establishes the Chinese flavor that runs through the score as one of its elements, recurring later in a bright, pentatonic melody for the strings.

But there are other episodes, too, that are redolent of the West. These include a fierce staccato dance a la Stravinsky and -- weirdest and most delightful of all -- a brass- heavy explosion over a sprinting bass line that sounds like a relic from a Henry Mancini Asian tour.

The orchestra dispatched all this with exemplary zeal, and Grin managed to enfold the score's disparate sections into a reasonably cohesive sweep. Concertmaster Robin Mayforth shone in a fiendishly virtuosic solo."
Joshua Kosman, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 2/7/2000

"To open, the Chinese-born conductor led the Cincinnati premiere of "Momentum," composed by her countrywoman, Chen Yi. A fusion of Western and Chinese influences, it pitted bold, almost violent swaths of color against delicate, ethereal soundscapes. Zhang knew just how to deliver its drama."
Janelle Gelfand, CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, 10/1/05

"Fittingly, the opening work on the program, 'Momentum' (1999), a powerful score that crackled with motion and energy, was by Zhang's countrywoman Chen Yi, already making great strides as composer."
Mary Ellyn Hutton, THE CINCINNATI POST, 10/1/05

...a compelling recent work by Chinese composer Chen Yi... Chen's "Momentum," which opened the concert, very successfully fuses spare, sinuous traditional Chinese elements with the complexity and rhythmic vibrancy of the European modernist tradition. The work is aptly titled - it pushes forward relentlessly - but it is most memorable for its astonishing effects and thick, dripping gobs of orchestral color. Chen summons huge, dense masses of sound, and she remains firmly in control of them.
Mike Greenberg, EXPRESS-NEWS, San Antonio, TX, 5/5/07

"Her appropriately titled "Caramoor's Summer" was dedicated to Frances Richard, the tireless composers' advocate at the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.... canny use of instrumental color... Part of Ms. Chen's success may come from approaching the orchestra with a fresh perspective: she works capably within its vocabulary, but brings in enough of a foreign accent - and not only in the pentatonic Chinese-isms - to reanimate the language with a sense of wonder.
Anne Midgette, Celebrating the Sweet Strains Of Summer, NEW YORK TIMES, 7/31/2003

"[Chen Yi] has a wonderful ear for sonorities and a keen sense of the tensions between keyboard and orchestra... [Piano Concerto] is based on a Chinese folk song but is in no sense folksy in spirit, passes through phases of extreme aggressiveness and lovely delicacy,... The piano shimmers and glistens, or confronts an assertive and colorful orchestra." NEW YORK POST

"Crossing over the Pacific, Chen Yi has journeyed into a musical world of her own. In her Concerto for piano and orchestra and in Points for the Chinese lute, East and West are blended with verve and skill. Her personality, full of joy, energy and purpose, has infused her music with a vibrant sense of life and immediacy."
Citation of the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS

"Yi brought a distinctive ethnic tinge to the [Oakland East Bay Symphony concert] program with the evocative Romance and Dance. The Romance portion of the work is languid and ethereal, with two solo violins in imitation of Chinese bamboo flute and zither pitted against a shimmering orchestral backdrop. The quiet initial strains build to a searing climax before receding once again into an atmospheric haze. The more vigorous Dance is a dissonant jumble, taking melodies commonly found in Beijing opera and casting them into a cauldron of nervous tremolos and pulsating repeated gestures. Co-concertmasters Terrie Baune and Dawn Harms were well-matched soloists, grinding their numerous glissandos and pentatonic harmonies with appealing energy, while the orchestra supplied vivacious, engaging support." Joseph Sargent, SFCV.org, 1/21/05

Brilliant Music From Chen Yi (Classical CDs section) 5 stars "Chen Yi Orchestral Music", The Women's Philharmonic; Chanticleer; JoAnn Falletta, conductor, New Albion 909, TT: 69:08, $16.99

"There are a number of composers these days trying to forge a musical link between East and West, but few who bring as much exuberant pizzazz to the task as Chen Yi. This magnificent new CD documents a concert last June devoted to her orchestral music, and it makes the point with splendid force.

The Chinese-born composer spent three years in San Francisco as composer-in-residence for the Women's Philharmonic and the men's chorus Chanticleer, in the course of which she created several exciting works for each ensemble. This disc includes three of the orchestral pieces and culminates with the vastly ambitious 'Chinese Myths Cantata.'

What is so thrilling about all of these pieces is the brilliant vitality with which Chen Yi dresses the strains of Chinese music in Western orchestral garb. In the pictorial, all-too-brief 'Ge Xu ('Antiphony'), for example, she re-creates the mountain top calls of a Chinese ethnic minority, the Zhuang; the sliding string melodies and thwacking percussion seem to shimmer through the autumn air.

'Duo Ye No. 2' sounds as if the Stravinsky of the early ballets had looked far to the East and plundered what he found there, sprinkling it with pugnacious orchestration and a dash of knowing wit. And the Symphony No. 2 stands as a dark, haunting cenotaph to the composer's late father.

The 35-minute 'Chinese Myths Cantata,' which joins orchestra, men's chorus and a quartet of traditional Chinese instruments, ... the musical riches are all there, especially in the choral passages, and in the high-relief solos for the pipa, the erhu and other Chinese instruments...the colorful genius of Chen Yi's writing shines through." Joshua Kosman, Sunday, Feb. 2, 1997, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"Chen Yi's delight in being a composer is abundantly evident as is her ability to 'speak' several languages. She is serious yet accessible, able to stir her listeners, to remind them of the sheer physical energy of orchestral music. Moreover, she devises various opportunities for players to act-out their roles as group members or as individuals." Elaine Barkin, IAWM JOURNAL

"Regarded as one of China's most important composers, Chen Yi is a brilliant figure, stretching musical boundaries at each turn. She integrates traditional Chinese melodies, instruments, and dances into her compositional palette and, in doing so, creates aural energy that is hard to equal. Percussive thunder can rain down on percussively harmonic chimes, just as dark, low-note string segments can shadow minimal sound scapes. This collection brings together two full orchestra pieces, including Chen Yi's rousing Symphony No. 2. There is also, though, the phenomenally large-scale Chinese Myths Cantata, full of oceanic vocal power and grace provided by Chanticleer. This is a stellar snapshot of New Music's large-ensemble present, and, hopefully, its future." ANDREW BARTLETT -- AMAZON REVIEWS

CHEN YI: Momentum; Chinese Folk Dance Suite; Dunhuang Fantasy; Romance and Dance; Tu
Cho-Liang Lin, Yi-Jia Susanne Hou (violin); Kimberly Marshall (organ)
Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Lan Shui
BIS- 1352(CD), No Reference Recording, rating 10/10

This release, alongside the recent Albany Records performance of her Cello Concerto, has convinced me that Chen Yi is a truly gifted composer of wide ranging expressiveness, with a distinctive voice. Not everything on this disc rises to the same level (a matter of individual taste in any case), but there's no question that Chen has something to say and abundant means at her disposal with which to say it. The more obviously folk-influenced works have something in common with Bartok, at least to the extent that Chen's recourse to popular idioms never compromises her modernity or personal style, and that's saying a lot considering that fact that she's working within a musical tradition in which tacky and sentimental "Orientalism" often produces the musical equivalent of a cute little Chinese parasol atop a very Western cocktail.

The Chinese Folk Dance Suite, a violin concerto in all but name, has the same rugged integrity as Bartok's Dance Suite, and its earthy, vigorous outer movements project a passionate strength that (as with Bartok) sounds far truer to Chen's original sources of inspiration than many more highly refined efforts. Similarly, the Dunhuang Fantasy for organ and chamber wind ensemble, after a grindingly dissonant opening for the soloist, settles down to what brings to mind the opening of The Miraculous Mandarin, with whooping brass and a leaping, two-note figure very close to the titular character's own leitmotif. By contrast, Romance and Dance is sweetly lyrical but never cloying, and all three soloists play with commitment and care, particularly violinist Cho-Liang Lin in the suite.

Momentum is 13 minutes of very effective orchestration, perhaps recalling Varese but in a style very much Chen's own, with its characteristic opposition of very high violins and very low brass and percussion. The music's overall curve of tension and release is very well plotted, and particular credit must go to the violin section of the Singapore Symphony for phrasing some very long and expressively rich unison passages with particular confidence and unanimity. A passionate string threnody also figures prominently as the central musical idea of Tu, though here I find the musical tension less well sustained after the violent opening, despite some evocative writing for the harp. On the other hand this dark and angry work, dedicated to the New York firefighters who died on 9/11, is about a million times more effective than John Adams' tribute to that terrible day, and Chen's emotional directness and lack of pretense is very refreshing.

As suggested above, the performances sound uniformly excellent, with the music's intensity and lyrical eloquence well sustained, while the sonics are simply tremendous. I also feel I must share with you a very interesting experience with this disc that I had just before writing this review. Ordinarily I would add my usual caution about the music's comparatively high level of dissonance and occasionally athematic textures not being for all tastes, but it happened that a friend of mine was over as I was listening to this for the third or fourth time, and he enjoyed it hugely. He isn't into classical music at all but nevertheless found much of Chen's work very exciting and ear-catching (particularly the percussion fusillades in Momentum and Tu), and so it is. Perhaps I more accurately should say that it's not for "refined" tastes, and that strong music sometimes demands strong ears. So try this and give yours a good workout. It can only be healthy. ClassicToday.com, David Hurwitz

CHEN Momentum. Chinese Folk Dance Suite. Dunhuang Fantasy. Romance and Dance. Tu.
Lan Shui, cond; Singapore SO; Cho-Liang Lin (vn); Yi-Jia Susanne Hou (vn); Kimberly Marshall (org)
BIS 1352 (66:18)

Chen Yi (b. 1953) has an impressive resume: studies in Beijing and at Columbia University (the latter with Chou Wen0chung and Mario Davidovsky among others), many residencies, commissions, awards, and recordings. (An extensive bio, list of works, and other information is available at the Theodore Presser Music Publishers Web site, www.presser.com.) On first hearing of this disc, it's easy to understand how she has achieved so much success; these works are loaded with unusual orchestral colors, vibrant rhythms, and tart melodies, primarily inspired by Chinese folk and court musics. Though more evocative than programmatic, her scores do contain musical references to specific dances, ceremonies and celebrations, instrumental sonorities and techniques, variously interwoven or contrasting with a manner of orchestration that occasionally calls to mind Stravinsky or Varese. The Chinese Folk Dance Suite (which, despite its title, could be considered a violin concerto in three movements) adapts these resources with the least amount of alteration -- in the opening movement, the high-spirited violin bounces along atop orchestral rhythms derived from the "Lion Dance," while the second includes distant percussion and an eerily percussive vocal component, and the third builds upon an intense 7/8 ostinato. Not just here, but often, percussion plays an important part in Chen's music, whether erupting out of Momentum's lyrical yet stormy melodic flow or providing symbolic emphasis as well as dramatic intensity to the 9+1+1 rhythmic motif that underscores Tu (composed in response to the attack on the World Trade Center). Though without a percussion section, even the Dunhuang Fantasy creates a turbulent environment with its layered and tangled ribbons of organ and wind ensemble lines. In general, however, the off-kilter, often jolting rhythms are tempered with tranquil episodes, giving Chen's music an engaging drama and satisfying balance. Listeners looking for something off the beaten path -- but not too far -- whole do well to make her acquaintance.
Art Lange, FANFARE, June/July 2004

"Chen Yi's 1985 Duo Ye takes its point of departure from some village singing the composer observed in a trip to the Chinese hinterlands. This begins with some noisy, quasi-primitive assertions, but the best music is the lyrical middle section (beginning at 1:50) where delicately ornamented tunes mimic the traditional pentatonic melodies Chen Yi must have heard? The Singapore Symphony under Lan Shui plays with world-class polish and loads of excitement, and BIS's recording is audiophile demonstration quality."
Mark Lehman, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, Sept./Oct. 2004

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ABOUT CHEN YI'S CHAMBER AND SOLO WORKS:

"Sparkle (1992) by Chen Yi ...the texture is bright and magical..." THE NEW YORK TIMES

"[Sparkle] is a happy rush of trills and scales and percussive explosions, but it also explores sophisticated pitch relationships." LOS ANGELES TIMES

"The evening's high point, surely, was Chen Yi's 'Sparkle.' Pulsating with restless energy, the music dashes, buzzes, soars like so many flights of the bumblebee. It catches its breath now and then -- with respites of fragmented, sinuous Chinese folk melodies -- only to be shaken and exhorted to race again by loud whacks on the drum. No other piece on the program approaches it in originality. And the zesty, visceral performance by the ensemble of eight only confirmed its heer audacity. CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"Impressive, too, was Chen Yi's "Sparkle," an aptly named piece of brilliance featuring slow steps in high trills from combinations of piano, marimba, vibraphone and piccolo, with always interesting backgrounds...the piece had a distinct, thrilling identity."
Paul Griffiths: Echoes of Artists Retreat, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 5/16/00

"Chen Yi's 'Sparkle' woke us from the reverie. The title says it all: this 1992 tour de force is a kaleidoscope of bright, metallic color, tightly structured and always demanding utmost virtuosity. With good reason it is her most popular piece." Paul Horsley, The Kansas City Star, 3/26/01

"Chen Yi's music captures the polyphony of two cultures. In her latest recording, 'Sparkle,' we hear the exhilarating tension, self-introspection and thrilling juxtaposition produced when an artist grapples with the superimposition of two distinct worlds... The CD further confirms that Chen Yi is one of the most exciting and talented composers working today." Eleonora M. Beck, IAWM JOURNAL, Vol. 7 Nos. 1/2

"Chen Yi's Qi, a marvelous hybrid piece -- Western instruments, including an array of percussion, called into the re-creation of an ancient Chinese concept of space and infinity that only music (never works) could properly describe. Among this new generation of Chinese composers, most of them now emigrated, Chen is particularly interesting for her ability to keep her own roots growing in foreign soil; what I know of her music (including a new disc on New Albion) spans vast cultural spaces with a most endearing, easy grace." Alan Rich, LA WEEKLY

"Chinese American composer Chen Yi offered the world premiere of 'Qi,' another of her fascinating cultural interweavings, a poetic essay marked by dynamic extremes and textural imagination."
Josef Woodard, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Qi, a thrilling new chamber work by Chen Yi, ...exhilarating. As ever with this formidable composer, the music draws on traditional Chinese sonorities, transforming them and putting them into service of a fiercely dramatic formal plan. Spare melodic fragments -- plucked and sliding cello figures, feathery flourishes by the flute -- begin and end the piece. But in between comes an accumulation of weight and momentum, culminating in a pair of ferocious outbursts dominated by the percussion." SAN FANCISCO CHRONICLE

"Qi" (1997), a glittering, kinetic juggernaut of a piece, said yet more about the immense talent of the Chinese-born Chen Yi, who now lives in America and can write academic-arcane and Pops-accessible (well, almost) works with equal facility and freshness.
Dino Annex reaffirms its eclectic excellence, Richard Buell, THE BOSTON GLOBE, 10/27/99

[About "Qi" for mixed quartet] The work's sense of unfolding is first-rate, its feel for ensemble color is nicely gauged, and its energy level is at times breathtaking.
David Cleary, NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR, New York, Vol.7, No.4

"Qi is a very effective 10-minute piece of nature-impressionism, the sketch-like designs integrated into a whole, the sounds compelling and intriguing."
Colin Anderson, www.classicalsource.com, 8/21/03

"... the improvisational fantasy of Chen Yi's lovely Qi... translates the essence of [Chinese] culture into Western instruments, tapping into their aggressive quality for dramatic impact and using snappy underlying riffs as a means of unity."
David Patrick Stearns, THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 11/15/03

"America's diversity, constantly enriched by new immigrants, is our greatest cultural strength. This dazzling work [Qi], a sonic depiction of life force by one of the most talented of a group of recent Chinese emigre composers, combines Western and Asian sonorities and aesthetics. 'Song in Winter' for harpsichord and zheng is another gem."
Frank J. Oteri: Another Century List, CHAMBER MUSIC, June 2000

Chen Yi's Qi (1996-97) ended the program. It was a vibrant, evocative work whose quartet of players was conducted with assurance by Karla Lemon. Brilliant arpeggiation and ornamental figuration for the piano (Karen Rosenak), vigorous, dynamic solos for the percussion (Chris Froh), and lyrical arabesques for the flute (Esther Landau) and cello (Thalia Moore) combined in an atmospheric portrayal of the Qi, or "life force" as embodied in Chen Yi's own musical style, a colorful, poetic blend drawn from the resources of two cultures.
Jules Langert: Honoring a Master, SFCV, 4/15/03

"Chen Yi's 'Ning,' a piece commissioned for [Ma's Silk Road] project, is a major new work integrating the pipa into a small ensemble of Western instruments (with cello and violin). It succeeds where so many other cross-cultural works have failed, establishing a feeling of balance and unity between instruments that speak different languages, forcing the Western players into places that aren't entirely comfortable, yet never distorting the natural capacities of their instruments. The piece has structure, depth of emotion, a wealth of color and pure aural fantasy, and it ingratiates itself on the imagination with each subsequent hearing?the dark, even ghoulish intimacies of Chen Yi..." Philip Kennicott, WASHINGTON POST, 10/22/2002

"Ning" (2001), by Chen Yi, used [violin, cello and pipa] in a melancholy and sometimes terrifyingly visceral evocation of China during World War II. A traditional song, "Jasmine Flower," is buried and fragmented within the work's textures; Wu Man, the virtuosic pipa player performed the song before the trio played "Ning". Allan Kozinn, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 5/9/2002

"A sorrowful but hopeful mood also pervaded the Chinese composer Chen Yi's 'Ning' (2001), her subtly powerful lament for a homeland ravaged by war. Her "storyteller" here was the amazing pipa (lute) player Wu Man, whose plucking sounds eerily rose and fell against, and finally merged with, the agitated statements of violin and cello." John von Rhein, CHICAGO TRIBUNE , 10/27/02

"Chen Yi's 'Ning,' ruminating on the notorious Rape of Nanking, showed off the string talents of Chang, Ou and Wu Man, whose pipa, a lute-style instrument held upright and plucked like a banjo as well as strummed, blended seamlessly with its Western counterparts. 'Ning,' rotating solo lines for all three players, had many of the same sonic textures as the great guitar works of Rodrigo or Sor. Chen Yi's music has been receiving an increasing number of performances locally of late, and she is a composer worth seeking out." Keith Powers, BOSTON HERALD, 1/10/2005

"Chen Yi's 'Ning,' for violin (Lynn Chang), cello (Carol Ou), and pipa (Wu Man) is an angry musical response to the 1937 Massacre in Nanjing by the invading Japanese. The music is dramatic, with lacerating violence finally moving toward meditation and the blessing of souls. The composer's compelling style bridges East and West, like the timbres of the instruments." Richard Dyer, BOSTON GLOBE, 1/14/05

"Ms. Wu was joined by Colin Jacobsen, a violinist, and his brother, Eric Jacobsen, a cellist, in a stellar rendition of Chen Yi's 'Ning.' This striking, texturally colorful work, veering from frenzied agitation to meditative resignation, commemorates the Japanese 1937-8 massacre in Nanjing."
Vivien Schweitzer, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 9/13/07

"Chen Yi's sextet, 'Near Distance,' evinced some delicate, dramatic sonorities in its fusion of east Asian and Western musical impulses." CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"'Near Distance' presents the composer 'lost in thought about ancient culture and modern civilization'; she is also obviously thinking about the parallels and contrasts between the music of the East and of the West." THE BOSTON GLOBE

Ms. Chen, one of several Chinese composers who have had an important impact on the new-music scene in recent years, contributed "Shuo" (1994), a cheerful, pretty and rhythmically vital work that quotes and transforms folk melodies from her homeland. THE NEW YORK TIMES, 8/10/99

"...the most immediately striking work on the program was Chen Yi's "Chinese Fables" (2002). This three-movement work for pipa, erhu, cello and percussion uses instrumental timbres to represent characters (usually animals, as in "The Fox Profited by the Tiger's Might") but not in a superficially illustrative way. Ms. Chen's writing is energetic and thoughtfully shaped, and deftly conveyed the intensity of these small dramas."
Allan Kozinn, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 11/10/2004

CHEN Sparkle, Song in Winter, Qi, Duo Ye, Shuo, As in a Dream, Near Distance. CRI 804 (62:04)

"First, Chen writes with real fluency for traditional Chinese instruments and combines them sensitively with Western instruments. There is no sense of a precious or false fusion here. Second, Chen has a feel for color that is fresh, immediate, and gives her music a strong profile. Especially using Western percussion, she creates sonic images that have real presence and mystery." Robert Carl, FANFARE, July/August 1999

"Friday was Chen Yi day at the Festival of New American Music at California State University, Sacramento, no doubt about it. At noon the cheerful, brightly articulate composer, born in China, trained there and in the United States, delivered the first of the 15-day festival's keynote speeches. She speaks vernacular American fluently, but the recorded examples of her recent music that she played for the audience packed even more weight. Friday night a wide-ranging concert of her music was played in the Recital Hall by the musicians of Music Now and the Pacific Arts Woodwind Quintet and a couple of brilliant guest soloists, with the composer herself providing introductions to the six works from the stage. In her enormously likable way, she was as much fun as the music, which is saying a lot. A lot of her music, both at noon and in the evening, seemed to speak for a spirit both bold and risk-taking. For Chen Yi, judging by her record, that spirit and a highly inventive talent for making music has piled up one of the most impressive collections of awards, commissions, residencies and other signs of success on the current American music scene."
Chinese composer charms new-music festival, William Glackin, THE SACRAMENTO BEE, 11/8/99

Chen's Fiddle Suite for Erhu/Huqin and String Quartet integrates the versatile voice of the Chinese fiddles into that of the quartet. The work's three movements are almost a concerto for erhu/huqin and the quartet. Fiddle player Xu Ke, using a contemporary Western pitch vocabulary, retains the traditional playing styles now soaring over the quartet accompaniment, now off on his own in virtuosic solo riffs reminiscent of the Chinese ensemble tradition.

In both cases [Zhou Long's Soul & Chen Yi's Fiddle Suite], the composers effectively merged Eastern and Western musical traditions, resulting in rock-solid pieces that some might call cross-over works but which are rather highly effective stand-alone scores that mingle the best of both worlds.
John Lambert, SPECTATOR, NC, 3/1/00

"... in the middle movement [of Fiddle Suite], where the er hu slides and groans expressively and the Western strings play with rarefied harmonies and striking sound effects, collectively producing a richly atmospheric tone picture." RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCh 6/8/2002

[About Sound of the Five for cello and string quartet] Together with cellist Margery Hwang, the quartet imitated the sounds of different Chinese instruments in each of its four movements. A tremendous technical challenge for the players, this composition also stresses the adaptation of Western atonality and musical structure to the timbres of Chinese instruments. Joe & Elizabeth Kahn, INDEPENDENT WEEKLY, 2/23-29, 2000

[About Sound of the Five for cello and string quartet] Chen's music is irresistible, unrelenting. With a smile and a wave, she yanked us back to life, turning Western instruments into vernacular Chinese bells, drums, pipes and a 2,000-year-old zither. Cheifetz, Third Angle's authoritative cellist, gave a spine-snapping performance, stalking the other instruments from precarious heights on the fingerboard. He sang out, hardly minimizing the piece's difficulties, but strengthening other virtues of rhythm and propulsion. David Stabler, THE OREGONIAN, 10/8/2007

"Though not exactly a breezy work, Feng (which means 'wind' in Chinese), composed by the celebrated Chen Yi, is shorter in length (two movements) and diversity of style. But there is no dearth of textural interest. Ms. Chen has discovered a way to exploit Western instruments and even Western harmonies without uprooting and divorcing herself from Chinese culture. She received a good performance of this fascinating study, and the fairly youthful wind quintet from the Bay area, Citywind, seemed to understand Chen's effort to resolve a cultural conflict." Barry L. Cohen, THE NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR

"Chen Yi's richly chromatic 'Ba Ban,' which opened the concert in a vividly articulated performance by Kuang-Hao Huang, made it clear that Carnegie's book is not a place for pianistic slumming: intermediate, here, means music that can be negotiated by a good conservatory undergraduate..."
Allan Kozinn, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 3/4/00

"Ba Ban, a 1999 composition by Chen Yi, who has produced a truly engaging, virtuosically written set of variations on the popular Chinese folk tune 'Ba Ban' which she claims to assimilate the style of Chinese Mountain song singing and Chinese instrumental playing. Ba Ban promises to win a real niche in the piano literature, and Mr. Sheng played it to the hilt."
Harris Goldsmith, NEW YORK CONCERT REVIEW, Summer 2004
"The music [The Points for pipa solo] proved entirely gripping." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"Chen Yi's whirling music shrinks cultural distances to the size of a room. With energy and purpose, she employs Western instruments such as the string quartet and piano, but her language -- ah, her language -- springs from roots embedded in Chinese melody and sonority. The result is an energizing mix of the universal and the culturally specific." Third Angle mix is exotic sound-shifting, David Stabler, THE OREGONIAN, 1/14/02

"Chen Yi's '...as like a raging fire...' (2001) was a departure for the composer from her typical joyful music. It began with explosive energy and even some anger. The chromatic ascending and descending scales on the violin and cello added depth to the piece. Contrasting this was piano turned artillery, lobbing 'shots' of struck chords over the bow of the audience."
New Music Network superb, Andrew Druckenbrod, POST-GACETTE, Pittsburgh, PA, 4/9/2002

"Her '... As Like a Raging Fire ...' (2001-2) paints the picture its title suggests, by way of rumbling piano figures, high-lying flute and clarinet trills, alarming violin harmonics and rapid cello bowing, all leading to a gradually rising figure that shows the fire dying away." Allan Kozinn, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 8/2/05

"...the Ying Quartet performed the world premiere of Chen Yi's 'At the Kansas City Chinese New Year Concert.' ...compelling piece...a fascinating amalgam of classical Eastern and Western idioms." Jeremy Eichler: "Whizzing Swords and Violin Bows", THE NEW YORK TIMES, 5/9/03

"Chen's 'The Talking Fiddle' [first movement of At the Kansas City Chinese New Year Concert] provided the brightest, freshest flavors. Her music began by conjuring up a bustling celebration that was full of joy...The viola shouted the greeting first. The others chimed in lustily."
--Steven Brown, THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, February 4, 2005

"Cho-Liang Lin has thrived in the center of the American school of violin playing while avoiding many of its excesses. His two-hour-plus recital Saturday at White Hall showed a variety of his strengths, and was an auspicious launch for the UMKC Conservatory's Signature Series. 'Romance and Dance' by the Conservatory's own Chen Yi received a highly accomplished rendering. The brief two-part piece opens with an ingenious tune that stays in the mind, then barnstorms to a close with a furious dance..." Paul Horseley, THE KC STAR, 9/27/04

"As a child in Guangzhou, the Chinese composer Chen Yi showed prodigious talent for the violin and piano. She also had a curiosity about Western music that the leaders of the Cultural Revolution thought suspect. She was sent to the countryside, where she worked as a laborer for 2 years. Still, she kept her violin, entertaining farmers with tunes from state-sanctioned Chinese operas and secretly practicing the Western music she knew.

Ms. Chen, 51, is now one of the most distinctive composers of her generation. A professor at the University of Missouri, she talked about her youth last Tuesday at Weill Recital Hall during one of the informative Making Music events, which present a composer in conversation with the erudite Ara Guzelimian, Carnegie Hall's artistic adviser, and a generous sampling of that composer's works.

Ms. Chen's music arrestingly merges elements of traditional Chinese and contemporary Western idioms. Hearing her speak so revealingly about it and simply being in the presence of this hardy woman, who bounded up and down the stairs to the stage all energy and smiles, gave me new insights into her work, and also made this evening the standout event in a full week of concertgoing in New York.

When the Central Conservatory in Beijing reopened in 1977, Ms. Chen was able to enroll, "a freshman at 25," she said wryly. Her dynamic way of assimilating Chinese and Western traditions came through vividly in a performance by the pianist Xiao-Min Liang of "Duo Ye," composed in 1984, a propulsive, raw and exhilarating work: imagine a young Chinese Bartok.

A week has gone by, and I still keep thinking about Ms. Chen's "As in a Dream," composed in 1988, two years after she entered Columbia University. Compellingly performed by the soprano Carol Meyer, the violinist Cho-Liang Lin and the cellist Nina Lee, it is a setting of two songs based on poems by a Sung dynasty woman poet. The vocal lines, sung with radiant sound and complete assurance by Ms. Meyer, emulate the recitation style - half sung and half spoken - of Chinese opera. But the instrumental parts are also conceived with Chinese vocal music in mind, which Ms. Chen demonstrated during her comments by singing the string parts. The playing seemed to capture the contours and inflections of a sung Chinese melody.

Also riveting was a more recent work, "Ning" (2001), for violin (Mr. Lin), cello (Ms. Lee) and pipa (Wu Man, whose self-possessed virtuosity on this traditional Chinese stringed instrument was breathtaking). In a particularly striking episode lacy tunes on the violin and cello interact with an eerily high-pitched skittish melody on the pipa.

Even when writing only for Western instruments as in "Sound of the Five," scored for string quartet (the brilliant Shanghai Quartet) and an extra soloistic cello (Edward Arron), Ms. Chen elicits sounds that merge the earthy, modal music of Chinese folk song with the hard-driving and harmonically astringent styles of Western contemporary music."
Anthony Tommasini, THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 28, 2004

"Chen Yi's Duo Ye, a work that intelligently internalizes traditional Chinese motives within a decidedly modernist context..." Jed Distler, CLASSICSTODAY.COM, 2004

Chen Yi Sparkles (CD review)

"This is a truly remarkable disc! It consists of seven riveting, wholly absorbing pieces by a composer whose music I now plan to monitor as closely as possible. Her name is Chen Yi, and her background includes initial training at the Beijing Conservatory (where one of her composition teachers was the English serialist Alexander Goehr) and graduate work with Mario Davidovsky and Chou Wen-chung at Columbia University.

Paradoxically, the works on this CD remind me of neither Chou and Davidovsky; instead, I hear flashes of early Terry-Rileyish minimalism, merged with the rhythmic propulsion and angular melodic thrust of Elliott Carter and Donald Erb, plus a sure sense of dramatic timing - and a penchant for brilliant instrumental timbre (particularly weddings of Eastern and Western sound sources) - that are uniquely her own.

The opening piece Sparkle (which lends its title to the entire CD) is a dazzler. It leaps out at the listener, maintaining its initial driving motor rhythms against splashes of color and sudden narrative turns. Song in Winter (joining Western harpsichord with Chinese instruments) and Near Distance for large ensemble offer a more predictable postromantic range of expressive, rhetorical devices, but set out with a very sure hand and - like every other work in the recording - a highly impressive command of timbral resources. Chen Yi has a spectacular gift for instrumentation, and this collection of chamber pieces only whets the appetite for a sampling of her "larger" music. When will CRI issue come of her orchestral pieces?" Elliott Schwartz, 20TH CENTURY MUSIC, June 1999

[About the CRi CD Sparkle] "Chen's harmonic language is surprisingly flexible. While her music generally inhabits a world that is tonal if not always triadic, she also convincingly writes pieces that are East Coast angular. The works on this disk are scored almost equally for Western and Chinese instruments; in all cases, her writing is highly idiomatic and effective, and her scoring is colorful and vibrant. Occidental instruments are sometimes asked to imitate their Eastern counterparts here; the flute in Qi is made to sound like a dizi (Chinese bamboo flute), while pipa (Chinese lute) timbres are evoked by the pizzicato strings of the title track.

Her sense of line and direction, while often unusual, works well, and her expression of form is idiosyncratic, yet strong and convincing. Chen handles atmospheric, stark, and busy textures equally well, and at times her music displays a startling level of ferocity. Song in Winter is a particularly good illustration of the last of these qualities. Scored for the seemingly delicate trio of harpsichord, dizi, and zheng (Chinese zither), the piece in fact sports some of the most vehemently rowdy music this reviewer has encountered in some time. Yet the writing in this example works staggeringly well, sounding plucky and robust, never forced or unnatural. Best of all, Chen combines these elements into a unique whole, making the proverbial great leap forward into a distinctive, personal style.

Performances here are uniformly splendid, featuring the New Music Consort, New York New Music Ensemble, Manhattan String Quartet, and numerous fine American and Chinese performers. Sound quality and production values are top-drawer.

The aforementioned fad for Chinese-influenced new music will likely subside eventually. When it does, some of the big names associated with it will surely disappear like shells washed from the shore by a receding tide. This critic believes that Chen's sterling body of work, like a large, colorful, beautifully formed conch shell, will remain long after that of many of her country's contemporaries has disappeared. This is an essential recording, an absolute must-hear."
David Cleary, NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR, Vol.7, No. 4

THRILLING MUSICAL CROSS-POLLINATION: CHEN YI Sparkle on CRI, (CD review), 5 stars
Music From China; New Music Consort; Manhattan String Quartet; New York New Music Ensemble

"The music of Chen Yi may be a bit more familiar to Bay Area concertgoers, thanks to her three- year stint as composer-in-residence with Chanticleer and the Women's Philharmonic (she'll have a new piece performed by the San Francisco Girls Chorus on May 24). But even longtime aficionados of her brilliant fusion of Chinese and Western strains may be astonished by the splendor of this magnificent disc.

The seven chamber pieces included here add up to a scintillating musical portrait of a composer at work on a thrilling cross-cultural project. At her best, Chen Yi sets Chinese folk music and European art music talking to each other so avidly that it can be hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins.

More important, the results are endlessly exciting and beautiful. The aptly named "Sparkle,'' a mixed octet, bursts out of the speakers with irrepressible urgency, its colors dancing and shining. In the string quintet "Shuo,'' Chen Yi mines a gorgeous Chinese folk melody for surprising contrapuntal riches, while 'Song in Winte'' combines the harpsichord and two ancient Chinese instruments, the flutelike dizi and the zheng (a kind of zither) in a flurry of beguiling archaism. Best of all, perhaps, is the pipa (lute) solo 'Duo Ye,' played with breathtaking virtuosity by Min Xiao-fen."
Joshua Kosman, Sunday, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 5/16/99

"There was definitely a fairy tale behind Chen Yi's slight but likeably evocative Ji-Dong-Nuo, which takes its name and inspiration from a Chinese folk ballad. A unison beginning opens out into short, animated passages largely based around the eastern five-note scale, moving through mercurial changes of mood and finally melting away into happy-ever-after nothingness." Erica Jeal, THE GUARDIAN, 11/17/2005

"Ji-Dong-Nuo by the Chinese composer Chen Yi (who, during the notorious Cultural Revolution, suffered for her art in the way few western composers have had to) relays a charming fairy-tale in delicate, short-breathed gestures exploring various registers of the keyboard, the modes and mannerisms of this lovely, affectionate little piece occasionally evoking Debussy." Christopher Morley, THE BIRMINGHAM POST, 11/15/2005

"Ms. Chen honored the form's roots by using Chinese folk melody as the basis of her ballade "Ji-Dong-Nuo" (2005), but if the traditional melody created the work's initial sound world, it was quickly submerged in thickets of Western modernism. By the middle of the work, which lasts less than five minutes, the simply harmonized melody heard in the opening bars had evolved into a virtuosic, texturally complex work that evoked Bartok's reconfigurations of Hungarian folk songs." Allan Kozinn, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 12/6/2005

"Chen Yi, in her 'Ancient Dances: Three Poems by Li Bai, 701-62,' set a graceful pipa line that sounded folk-inspired but also deftly tested the instrument's expressive range against a tactile light percussion line... A video with morphing watercolors and Chinese calligraphy, accompanied the work."
Allan Kozinn, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 4/8/2006

Chen Yi's China West Suite, in its U.S. premiere, was a collection of four short exercises on Chinese themes, by turns stately and exuberant, and all of them done with the composer's mastery of form and tonal weight.
Joshua Kosman, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 10/13/07

It was exciting to have Chen Yi back in the Bay Area for the U.S. premiere of her China West Suite, a welcome addition to the composer's body of work. Drawing on folk songs of the Meng, Zang, and Miao peoples, Chen's work shows a brilliant feel for the dissonant implications of the folk music she quotes. The often rapid variations between the original material and her own extensions of it were handled seamlessly. Her approach reached a high point in the third movement, "Zang Songs," as fleet, highly decorated piano lines overlapped, grabbing fragments and flashes of the folk material amid her contemporary language. Her piano writing was both challenging and idiomatic, and Namekawa and Davies, for whom the work was written, responded with clear enjoyment.
Benjamin Frandzel, SFCV, 10/16/07

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ABOUT CHEN YI'S VOCAL WORKS:

"Cast in seven movements, the 40-minute song cycle finds its verbal and harmonic inspiration in the traditional Chinese arts. The movements bear allusions to the different dynasties that have comprised the history of Chen's homeland and the gestures of Chinese opera and folk culture permeate this often exquisitely crafted work.

In their sole unaccompanied section and the four with strings, the 12 vocalists slide into pitches, declaim discrete syllables and animate a spare harmonic scheme. The strings favour dramatic glissandi, much decorative filigree and percussive thwacks that might have derived from an operatic epic. Chen lingers over a romantic string reverie before plunging us into a propulsive recreation of a boisterous village band, where a deft hand bridges a wide cultural chasm. The listener's experience of the work is akin to unrolling an ancient Chinese scroll, savouring the wonders as they pass before you."
Allan Ulrich: Review of Chen Yi's "From the Path of Beauty", FINANCIAL TIMES, 3/17/2008

[In the song cycle From the Path of Beauty premiered by Chanticleer and the Shanghai Quartet] "Chen's writing is engaging, and straddles a line between a 20th-century soundscape - with jagged dissonances, volatile textures, and contemporary performance techniques for string instruments and voice - and a more olden and, perhaps to some listeners, foreign musical world. Performing alone in the first song and along with the string quartet in four others, Chanticleer was entrusted with elements of traditional Chinese folk music and performed its parts - made up of nonsense syllables and, at times, vocal effects - with conviction and precision. The Shanghai Quartet blended exceptionally well with the choir and,