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Recipient Organization: Chanticleer
Lead Artist: Chen
Yi
Genre and Date Awarded: Performing
Arts, May 1995
Premiered: June
14-16, 1996, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Composer Chen Yi collaborated with Chanticleer, the Women’s
Philharmonic, the Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company, Chinese Cultural
Productions, and the Dunhuang Ensemble to create and perform a cantata
based on three Chinese creation myths. It was performed by all of
the participants as the climax of a full concert of Ms. Chen’s
compositions in June 1996, and featured on The Music of Chen
Yi, a CD released in 1997 by Albion Records.
From 1993-96, Chen Yi served as composer-in-residence with Chanticleer,
the Women’s Philharmonic, and Aptos Creative Arts Center, all
in San Francisco, with the support of a New Residencies grant from
Meet the Composer. She worked closely with the artistic directors
and performers of the two professional performing arts companies,
writing two new works for each company through the course of her
residency. Dr. Chen wrote, “Together, we all attended various
concerts, did research, and gradually developed an idea for a project
to compose a fresh and complete music theatre work.” The “Chinese
Myths Cantata” was envisioned to culminate final year of her
residency and bring together composer, vocal ensemble, and orchestra
with additional artistic partners.
As is true of much of Dr. Chen’s work, the partners sought
to bring together Eastern and Western music and, through the multi-media
performance, to reach new audiences. The scale and complexity of
the partnerships—across disciplines and cultural orientations—were
a new challenge for the collaborators. The cantata demanded that
singers and instrumentalists trained in the western style focus on
Chinese-inspired music and themes, and required Chinese-trained musicians
and dancers to meld with music written for western instruments and
voices. Lily Cai choreographed movement for Chanticleer as well as
her dancers.
Their venture was quite successful. Critic Timothy Pfaff in the San
Francisco Examiner wrote:
The work was sheerly transfixing. What the “Cantata” made
clear in a way the earlier works could not have was that Chen,
the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, is not only
a master of instrumental color. In addition, she has the rare
ability to manipulate, then integrate musical forces of different
characters and sizes. Sealing the deal, she proves to be a master
of dramatic shape and form.
The “Cantata” is microtonal in a natural, almost casual
way, and the revelation was that the non-Chinese instrumentalists
and singers managed it so expertly and pointed it to such clear expressive
ends.
Chen Yi is a Chinese-born American composer of orchestral, chamber,
choral, and solo works that have been performed throughout the world.
Numerous ensembles and orchestras in China, Germany, Singapore, and
the USA have commissioned her and she has received many grants and
awards. While featuring Dr. Chen’s vision, “Chinese Myths
Cantata” depended on the contributions of a remarkable set
of artistic partners:
- Chanticleer, the only full-time, professional, classical
vocal ensemble in the United States, has built its reputation on
stellar interpretations of vocal literature, from Renaissance to
vocal jazz, and from gospel to new music. It was founded in 1978
by Louis Botto and is currently directed by Joseph Jennings. Prior
to this project, Chanticleer had produced successful collaborations
with George Coates Performance Works, Eiko and Koma, Dimensions
Dance Company, the San Francisco Symphony, and others. Among the
many composers it had commissioned were Anthony Davis, Bernard
Rands, and Peter Schickele.
- The Women’s Philharmonic was the only professional
orchestra of its kind, dedicated to the promotion of women composers,
conductors, and performers. Its goal was to change the face of
what is played in every concert hall by incorporating works by
women composers into standard orchestral repertoire. At the time
the Creative Work Fund grant was awarded, the Women’s Philharmonic
had presented works by 137 women composers, including 125 premieres;
and had collaborated with Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble, composers
Cindy Cox, Erica Muhl, and writers Alice Walker, Annie Dillard,
and Maya Angelou. It made substantial contributions to advancing
women composers, players, and conductors until its closing in 2004.
Its then former music director JoAnn Falletta conducted the “Chinese
Myths Cantata” at the 1996 premiere.
- Lily Cai, Chinese Dance Company, a resident company
of Chinese Cultural Productions, was established in 1988 by Chinese
dance authority Lily Cai. The company, whose repertoire includes
dozens of new works, expands traditional Chinese dance forms in
contemporary choreographic and theatrical settings. It has given
hundreds of performances for festivals, conferences, universities,
community events, and school and senior programs; and it produces
an annual season at Yerba Buena Center. The parent organization
to Lily Cai’s dance company and contributor of visual design
elements to “Chinese Myths Cantata,” Chinese Cultural
Productions was founded in 1987 to promote greater public awareness
of classical, folk, and modern Chinese dance and music, to create
contemporary, original, interdisciplinary work that is firmly rooted
in Chinese cultural traditions, to challenge American conceptions
of traditional Chinese and Chinese American culture, and to encourage
Chinese American artists to explore new avenues of self-expression.
- The Dunhuang Ensemble was founded in 1993 by zheng
player Liu Wei-shan to conserve the music played by traditional
Chinese instruments. It has performed at the Herbst Theater and
Chinese Cultural Center in San Francisco as well as in Reno and
Los Angeles. The ensemble’s members and their instruments
performing the “Chinese Myths Cantata” were Min Xiao-fen;
pipa (lute); Wei-shan Liu, gu-zheng (zither); Jie-bing Chen, erhu
(fiddle); and Yang-qin Zhao, yangqin (dulcimer).
Chanticleer in Chen Yi’s “Chinese
Myths Cantata”
Chen Yi
A native of Guangzhou, Chen Yi began studying violin and piano when
she was three, but was forced to abandon her studies at age 15 and
became a laborer in the Chinese countryside during the Cultural Revolution.
Ironically, this hardship, which lasted about two years, introduced
Chen Yi to her most enduring source of musical inspiration: the folk
culture of China.
After the Cultural Revolution, Chen Yi enrolled in the Beijing Central
Conservatory of Music, where she studied composition with Professor
Wu Zu-Qiang. In 1986, when she became the first woman in China to
receive a master's degree in composition, she was honored by a performance
dedicated entirely to her orchestral work given by the Chinese Musicians'
Association, the Central Conservatory of Music, Radio Beijing, CCTV,
and the Central Philharmonic of China. Considered one of the most
important composers in China, Chen Yi's orchestral works have been
recorded by the China Record Corporation, and her chamber music featured
in Sound and Silence, a series of 10 films on contemporary music
co-produced by the International Society of Contemporary Music.
Chen Yi came to the United States where she obtained her Doctorate
of Musical Arts degree with distinction in May of 1993 from Columbia
University in New York; her principal composition teachers were Chou
Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky.
Many of the world's most respected ensembles have performed Chen
Yi's music. Her commissions include works for the Cleveland, Seattle,
Singapore, Pacific Symphony; Brooklyn and Women’s Philharmonic;
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Stuttgart
Chamber Orchestra, Yehudi Menuhin, Yo-Yo Ma, Evelyn Glennie, Rascher
Saxophone Quartet, Ying Quartet, New Music Consort, San Francisco
Contemporary Music Players, SF Girls Chorus, Network for New Music,
Music From China, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Los Angeles
Philharmonic Association, among others. Major commissions have been
supported by the Koussevitzky, Fromm, Ford, Rockefeller and Roche
Foundations, Chamber Music America, Creative Work Fund, San Francisco
Art Commission, Mary Cary Flagler Trust, NEA, NYSCA, Carnegie Hall,
New Heritage Music Foundation, American Guild of Organists, and Meet
The Composer.
Dr. Chen’s music has also been performed by the BBC, Vienna
Radio, American National, China National, San Francisco, Virginia,
Bamberg, Munich, Berlin, NHK, Hamburg Radio Symphony; BBC, Auckland,
Hong Kong Philharmonic; Halle and American Composers Orchestra, Munich
and Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, and many others. Fellowships have
been received from Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for
the Arts, and American Academy of Arts and Letters. Honors include
the prestigious Ives Living Award from the AAAL, the Eddie Medora
King Composition Prize, the Lili Boulanger Award, the Sorel Medal
Award, the Calarts Alpert Award, the Stoeger Award from the Chamber
Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the top prize from the China
National Composition Competition.
Chen Yi is a frequent lecturer in composition workshops and her
concerts worldwide. She is appointed to Guest Professor by five conservatories
in China, and serves on the board or music jury of such prestigious
national musical organizations as: Meet The Composer, Chamber Music
America, Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, American Composers
Orchestra, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers,
National Endowment for the Arts, and International Alliance of Women
in Music, among others.
Currently he Lorena Searcey Cravens Millsap Missouri Distinguished
Professor in Music Composition at the Conservatory of the University
of Missouri-Kansas City, Ms. Chen has also served on the composition
faculty of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore (1996-98), and has
been the Composer-in-Residence of the Women’s Philharmonic,
Chanticleer and Aptos Creative Arts Center in San Francisco, supported
by Meet the Composer’s New Residencies program (1993-96). Her
music is published by Theodore Presser Company in the US, and has
been recorded on the Bis, New Albion, CRI, Teldec, Angel, Nimbus,
Cala, Avant, Atma, Hugo, and China Record Corporation labels.
Chanticleer in Chen Yi’s “Chinese Myths Cantata”
www.chanticleer.org
http://www.presser.com/Composers/info.cfm?Name=CHENYI
http://hometown.aol.com/chenyi/myhomepage/profile.html
http://www.newmusicon.org/v9n4/v94chen_yi.htm
http://composers21.com/compdocs/chenyi.htm
http://www.newmusicnow.org
http://www.umkc.edu/impact
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