Dear all,
A childhood dream is coming true for me: The Philadelphia Orchestra will perform my symphony orchestral composition Hello Gold Mountain 同舟, presented by Carolina Performing Arts featuring me on guzheng/voice and oud master Shanir Blumenkranz (Silk Road Ensemble).
Time : September 21, 19:00pm
Venue: Memorial Hall, UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Hello Gold Mountain is inspired by real stories of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai from Europe before and during World War II, and built lives in China.
In 1973, The Philadelphia Orchestra became the first American orchestra to perform in the People’s Republic of China. The visit helped open the door to a new era of cultural exchange. Since then, the Orchestra has blazed new paths for classical music, with a bevy of boundary-busting musicians and one-of-a-kind performances.
This fall, on the fiftieth anniversary of that historic trip, the Orchestra will explore this rich legacy of cultural diplomacy over two nights in Chapel Hill. See below for more information about these two distinct performances.
I am honored to have this opportunity to work with not only one of the most distinguished symphony orchestras in the world, but also the first American orchestra that came to Beijing, my home city which led to a golden era of music cultural exchanges that impacted hundreds of millions of youth in China like myself.
Today’s track is a solo guzheng improvisation I recorded yesterday, inspired by an elegant mayfly that sat on my window for a long time. The ancient Roman encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder described the mayfly as the “hemerobius” in his Natural History:
The River Bug on the Black Sea at midsummer brings down some thin membranes that look like berries out of which burst a four-legged caterpillar…but it does not live beyond one day, owing to which it is called the hemerobius.
The mayfly has come to symbolise the transitoriness and brevity of life. The English poet George Crabbe, who was interested in insects, compared the brief life of a newspaper with that of mayflies, both being known as “Ephemera”, things that live for a day:
“In shoals the hours their constant numbers bring
Like insects waking to th' advancing spring;
Which take their rise from grubs obscene that lie
In shallow pools, or thence ascend the sky:
Such are these base ephemeras, so born
To die before the next revolving morn.
— George Crabbe, “The Newspaper”, 1785
Wu Fei 吴非
Wufeimusic.com
