Orchestra 2001 is joined by the renowned violinist Cho-Liang Lin to celebrate the amazing power and variety of contemporary music from China, Japan, and Taiwan, with outreach activities to involve Philadelphia Asian communities.

Ms. Chen’s new violin concerto, “Spring Reflections,” is her major oeuvre since her opera “The Firmiana Rain” premiered at Yokohama’s Minato Mirai Hall in June 2014. “Spring Reflections” will be performed by violin virtuoso Cho-Liang Lin and it is dedicated to him. The two last teamed up in November 2001, when Lin performed Chen’s sacred song cycle “Sonic Mandala” in New York. It was just two months after the tragedy of 9/11 and James Freeman, the Music Director of Orchestra 2001, conducted that memorable event. It was at the invitation that Mr. Freeman offered to Mr. Lin at the time that led to this new concerto some fourteen years later.

In ‘Spring Reflections’, Chen weaves dreams in changing lights and colors… cantabile. The spring awakens with a shimmering interior while ice still reflects the crystalline sparkles in the mysterious space. The interplay among ensemble players constructs mere drama: light glimmers through space with an exuberant sense of energy exhibiting strong outlines and clear bright colors. This energy is at times subtle, quite ephemeral as mist or faint glowing contour. While one also hears the refreshing bird calls penetrating through the transparent texture, the three movements manifest dancing traces…segmented murmurs… and lights and shadows pass speedily in the sky.

Born in Taipei, May-Tchi Chen received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition from the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati. As an International Nadia and Lili Boulanger Fellow in Paris in 1988-1989, Ms. Chen’s music was performed at Radio France and Centre George Pompidou. She was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York City. In 1997-98, she led the Program-Planning Division of the National Theater/Concert Hall in Taipei. Chen was a nominee for the 1997 Music Composition Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her opera ‘the Firmiana Rain’ since the Showcasing American Composers series of New York City Opera, was premiered at the Taiwan National Theater, and appeared in Beijing and Yokohama.

Shin-ichiro Ikebe was born in Mito, Japan, in 1943. He graduated from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music with a Masters Degree in 1971. As one of Japan’s busiest and most well known composers, he won the first prize for composition at the 35th Japan Music Competition in 1966. In addition to his music for symphony orchestra, opera, theater, radio, and television, his works include many film scores, including those for Akira Kurosawa’s “Dreams” (1989), “Rhapsody in August (1991)” and Shohei Imamura’s “The Eel” (1997). He is currently chairman of the Japan Federation of Composers and a professor at the Tokyo College of Music.

“Tanada II,” for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, and cello, was commissioned by the Mito Arts Foundation and premiered in 2004 by the Ensemble Nomad. “Tanada” is a Japanese term for a terraced rice field, which is often built into a steep slope. The work is a sequel to “Tanada I,” written for the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.

Toru Takemitsu was born in Tokyo in 1930. During the post-war years, he came into contact with Western music through radio broadcasts by the American occupying forces – not only jazz, but especially classical music by Debussy and Copland and even by Schoenberg. Although Takemitsu was essentially a self-taught composer, he nevertheless sought contact with outstanding teachers: Toshi Ichiyanagi acquainted the composer with the European avant-garde of Messiaen, Nono and Stockhausen, and Fumio Hayasaka introduced him to the world of film music and forged contacts to the film director Akira Kurosawa for whom Takemitsu produced several scores to film plots. He taught composition at Yale University and received numerous invitations for visiting professorships from universities in the USA, Canada and Australia. He died in Tokyo in 1996.

Takemitsu’s music reflects this in the use of fragmented melodies over sustained pitches, with flexible durations, which freely connect to one another. The Rain Tree Sketches were inspired by a poem by Japanese novelist, and friend to the composer, Kenzaburo Oe, which describes ‘the clever rain tree’, an ancient tree whose thousands of tiny leaves collect and store rain water, so that after the storm has passed, rain continues to fall from the tree. Precipitation is suggested through single droplets of quiet, lone sustained notes and sudden dissonant clusters of sounds, as if shaken from saturated branches.

The conceptual and multifaceted composer/conductor Tan Dun has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions. A winner of today’s most prestigious honors including the Grammy Award, Oscar/Academy Award (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Grawemeyer Award for classical composition and Musical America’s “Composer of The Year,” Tan Dun’s music has been played throughout the world by leading orchestras, opera houses, international festivals, and on the radio and television.

I called this piece “In Distance” because it was a kind of questioning of myself. On the simplest level, there is a wide distance between each of the instruments in register, timbre, and dynamics. Then, even though I used three western instruments, the music is often very far from the way these instruments might usually sound. The piccolo is treated more like the Chinese bamboo flute, the harp is treated like the koto, and the bass drum is made to sound like Indian drums, played only with palms and fingers. A third meaning can be heard in the texture of the music, which is very open with lots of space, as I began to use rests as a kind of musical language. Finally, I explored the distance, even the conflict between atonal writing and folk materials. Written just after I arrived in New York, I began to see myself within the clarity of distance. – Tan Dun

Ye Xiaogang is one of the best-known young composers in China having studied at the Central Conservatory of Music of China from 1978 until 1983. In 1982 he won the first prize at the Alexander Tcherepnin Composition Competition. In 1983, after completing his studies, he was appointed composer-in-residence and became a teacher at the Central Conservatory. From 1987 Ye Xiaogang studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester in the USA. After taking his Master’s Degree, he lived as a free-lance composer in Pittsburgh. Ye Xiaogang has received numerous commissions. His works have been performed in East Asia, New Zealand, USA and Europe. “Nine Horses” was commissioned by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and was first performed in 1996 by that ensemble, Richard Stock conducting.