Huang, Ruo: Drama Theater Nos. 2-4 / String Quartet No. 1, "The 3 Tenses"

Featuring

Ruo Huang
Xiao-fen Min
Future In REverse

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Composer Biography

Huang Ruo was born in China in 1976, the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended, and began studying composition and piano at age six with his father, a well-known Chinese composer.

Compositional Technique

The Drama Theater Cycle, a series of five works by Huang Ruo, combines Western and Chinese instruments and requires musicians to act, speak, chant, sing, and play additional percussive instruments.

Critical Reception

Huang Ruo has been cited by The New Yorker as 'one of the most intriguing of the new crop of Asian-American composers' and won the 2008 International Composition Prize of the Luxembourg Society for Contemporary Music.

Recording & Production

This album features world première recordings of Huang Ruo's Drama Theater Nos. 2-4 and String Quartet No. 1: The Three Tenses.

Performer Biography

Min Xiao-Fen, the pipa soloist and vocalist on this recording, was a pipa soloist with the Nanjing Traditional Music Orchestra of China for ten years and won the Jiangsu National Pipa Competition.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Composer Huang Ruo's compositional technique, which he calls 'dimensionalism,' integrates Chinese folk, Western avant-garde, rock, and jazz influences.