Chamber Music
Five People, Three Tales
for Piano quintet and fixed media (2025)
This piece is inspired by Ten Curiosities, a celebrated excerpt from Hengyang Huagu Opera. This local opera form from Hunan is known for its strong regional color, humor, exaggerated performance style and driving rhythm. As a child, I once heard the veteran artist Zhang Ziying sing Ten Curiosities at a rural banquet. The raw and direct voice, filled with humor and power, together with the distinctive tones of the Hengyang dialect, left a lasting impression on me. Ten Curiosities is not only humorous but also critical. It reflects the everyday scenes and social issues of many southern Chinese cities in the 1980s, including the culture of mahjong, the tension between rural and urban life, and the conflicts between public order and police authority. Its folk humor is also a form of critique, sharp and vivid, turning this local opera piece into a mirror of society at that time.
Years later, when I became immersed in hip hop, these childhood sounds came back to me. The flow, syncopation and breath control of rap resonated with the tonal inflections and rhythms of the Hengyang dialect. I began to weave these two seemingly distant sound worlds together with instrumental writing, creating a rhythmic language that crosses both place and time.
2025 – Taproot New Music Festival
Five People, Three Tales will premiere on November 9th (UC Davis, CA) by Empyrean Ensemble
Keep in Touch
for string quartet (2025)
Keep in Touch is a musical composition full of wit and creativity, inspired by the everyday experience of hearing a phone ringtone and people's instinctive reactions to it. The work seamlessly integrates the familiar iPhone ringtone melody into its musical structure, using imitation, transformation, and emotional progression to portray the curiosity, anticipation, anxiety, and unease it provokes—a series of modern emotional responses.
Here, the ringtone is not merely a signal but acts as a "troublemaker." The moment it sounds, it triggers a cascade of emotions:anticipation, curiosity, anxiety, and even a tinge of panic—"Who's calling? Is it good news or bad?".
Keep in Touch premiered on March 5th (MO) at University of Missouri-Kansas City by Del Sol Quartet
NON-STOP!
for reed quintet, video and fixed media (2025)
Non-Stop! is inspired by the Tang Dynasty relief Offering Procession of the Empress as Donor with Her Court at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. In this piece, I explore how ancient Chinese history can meet contemporary sound by blending Tang court music, electronics, and visual art into one evolving space.
The empress and her attendants are no longer fixed in stone. Through sound and digital imagery, their gestures stretch, repeat, blur, and erupt—moving in shifting rhythms that break away from the relief’s stillness. The figures dissolve and re-form across new layers of time, creating a dialogue between past and present.
2025 – RED NOTE New Music Festival
Non-Stop premiered on March 26th (Normal, IL) at Illinois State University by Akropolis Reed Quintet
Blossom of Renewal
for Chinese pipa, piano, percussion, string quartet and dancers (2023)
Blossom of Renewal brings together music and dance to explore the transition between winter and spring in Beijing, inspired by the Chinese Twenty-Four Solar Terms. It reflects on how life moves between stillness and renewal, darkness and emerging light.
Two dancers in long brown skirts form the image of a withered winter tree, their arms and bodies stretching upward in search of spring. In Great Cold, pipa harmonics and tremolos in the string quartet create a stark winter landscape while quietly suggesting hidden vitality.
The piece blends Chinese seasonal philosophy, traditional instruments, and contemporary sound, seeking a deep integration of music and movement and revealing the expressive potential of interdisciplinary creation.
2023 – The 10th Music and Dance Collection
Blossom of Renewal premiered on April 29th (Dance Theatre, Beijing) at Central Conservatory of Music
Gossamer Dreams in Grottoes
for Chinese bamboo flute, violin, viola, cello and double bass (2021)
This piece is inspired by the movement lines of Chinese classical dance in the grottoes. I transform the visual rhythm of dance into sound, building the music entirely from the gestures themselves.
Classical Chinese dance carries elements of opera and martial arts, where sound and movement are closely linked. I use the rhythm and meaning of the body to shape musical gestures, allowing movement to become sound and sound to suggest movement. It creates a sense of painting forms with music and unites what we hear and see.
Through exploring many instrumental techniques, I evoke timbres of traditional Chinese instruments, gongs, drums, and operatic color. The music blends lyrical expression with the dramatic energy of martial movement.
The structure follows the logic of classical dance: graceful, powerful, and full of contrast. A recurring musical idea, inspired by operatic circular motion, connects the sections and shapes the emotional flow.
2021- The 10th RIVERS AWARDS Composition Competition (RACC)
Gossamer Dreams in Grottoes premiered at Shanghai Conservatory Of Music by Shanghai Chamber Orchestra (SCO)