Composition Colloquium: Yao Chen

The music of YAO Chen strikes audiences with its innovative ways of bringing the traditions of Chinese and Western music and its poetic telling of the composer’s innermost thoughts. His perceptions on musical time, timbre, intonation, pulsation, and expression are always at frontiers: between the old and the new, between the East and the West, between irrational mysticism and rational logic. While devoting himself mainly to thefield of contemporary art music, YAO also experiments with other genres, writing music for films and theatre as well as improvisation.

The music of YAO Chen strikes audiences with its innovative ways of bringing the traditions of Chinese and Western music and its poetic telling of the composer’s innermost thoughts. His perceptions on musical time, timbre, intonation, pulsation, and expression are always at frontiers: between the old and the new, between the East and the West, between irrational mysticism and rational logic. While devoting himself mainly to thefield of contemporary art music, YAO also experiments with other genres, writing music for films and theatre as well as improvisation. Cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary concepts permeate his creative inspiration and compositional output, presenting his understanding of the value of new music in enlivening global cultures.

 

These aesthetic pursuits and values have been realized within his recent representative works, such as Two Poems for orchestra, Jun for pipa and double bass,Yearning for zheng and double bass, and the instrumental theatre piece Paramita. These pieces not only demonstrate his talent in navigating situations covering a wide emotional spectrum and dramaturgical elements in music writing, but also reveal his versatility in structuring musical forms that embrace mixed instruments, musical languages and styles.

 

In recent years, his music has received a significant amount of recognition in many distinguished international arenas. His music has been performed by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Orchestre National de Lorraine, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Pacifica String Quartet, Quatuor Diotima, eighth blackbird, Camerata Woodwind Quintet, Quintet of the Americas, Qilin Duet, Civitas Ensemble, New Fromm Players, Earplay Ensemble, Israel Contemporary Players, Conundrum, Wild Rumpus New Music Collective, Tang Quartet, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, TianYing Chinese Ensemble, Beijing New Music Ensemble, etc. YAO has collaborated with countless artists, including conductors Cliff Colnot and Rei Hotoda, Chinese pipa-players Yang Wei and Lan WeiWei, Chinese bamboo flutist Zhang Weiliang, zheng player Yu-Chen Wang, Violin Virtuoso Lee-Chin Siow, viola virtuoso Xu Peijun and Veit Hertenstein, double bassists DaXun Zhang,Michael Cameron and Hanjui Chen, marimba virtuoso Wei-Chen Lin, harpist Niclas Tulliez, sopranos Tony Arnold and Allison Angelo, flutists Denis Bouriakov and Brook Ferguson, pianist Nareh Arghamanyan, and bayan-players Luo Han and Stanislav Venglevski, also Kun Opera singers Lu Jia and Xiao Xiangping.

 

He has also received commissions, awards and fellowships from many prestigious organizations such as the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, New Music USA, Radio France, ASCAP, Barnett Family Foundation Flute Competition, Leonard Bernstein Fund, Art Institute of Chicago & Silk Road Chicago Project, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, TMSK Liu Tianhua Composition Competition, Greece International Composition Competition, East Carolina University Orchestral Composition Competition, Aspen Music Festival, Chinese Fine Arts Society International Composition Competition, Viacom-Sumner M. Redstone Foundation in China, Central Conservatory of Music, University of Chicago, etc.

 

YAO has shared his music with audiences at many music festivals throughout the world, including the Radio France Festival Présences and Alla Breve, Tanglewood Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Centre Acanthes Festival in France, Pacific Music Festival in Japan, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Asian Composers League Festival in Israel, Moscow International Accordion Competition, First International Tianjin Accordion Festival, U.S. Midwest Graduate Music Consortium, Chicago Contempo Concerts, June In Buffalo Contemporary Festival, SoundField Music Festival, soundSCAPE Music Festival, Random Access Music New Music Festival and the Music of Now Marathon Festival in New York City, East Carolina University New Music Festival, University of Louisville New Music Festival, and Western Illinois University New Music Festival.

 

He is currently Associate Professor in Composition at Central Conservatory of Music in P.R. China. He holds Honorary Associateship from The National Academy of Music. He served as one of the final judges for 2010 International Salvatore Martirano Composition Competition, and has also been a judge for Red Note New Music Festival Composition Competition. He was the Co-director of 2014 Red Note New Music Festival.

 

YAO embarked on his lifelong musical journey in the People’s Republic of China. He received rigorous training in composition and music theory at the Xinghai Conservatory of Music High School in Guangzhou and then the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. After coming to the United States in 2001, he pursued studies in composition at the University of Chicago. He has taught at the University of Chicago Music Department, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Music, the Illinois State University School of Music, and the Soochow University School of Music. (YAO is his surname, and Chen is his first name; for further information about his music

 

Sponsor: Department of Music

Event Contact: kueno@berkeley.edu