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2024年musicON音乐节共分5场音乐会，演出60位作曲家的作品。特别开设的“致敬作曲家”环节，将演出中外作曲大师的作品。今年推出受尊敬的两位音乐界翘楚，一是中国作曲家徐振民先生（1934-2024），一是日本作曲家西村朗先生（1953-2023）。演出他们的作品是特别纪念，也是学习音乐传承的宝贵机会。
▼节目单（系列音乐会第一场，2024年10月25日19:00，美国国家歌剧院音乐厅）
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本场音乐会将演出作品12部，其中：致敬作曲家作品1部，第二届musicON作曲比赛（决赛）作品3部，特邀作曲家作品4部，美好艺术中心学员作品4部。
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Jinhan XIAO, was born on 3rd. April, 2000 in Changsha, Hunan Province, China. In 2017, She began studying with Xiang-Lin ZHOU and was admitted into the Composition Department of Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 2018. Since 2018, she has been studying in the class of Shen-Ying QIAN. Till now her composition includes arts songs and music for solo instruments, ensemble, chorus, orchestra and electronic music. She has received many world prestigious prizes and awards, among them: fourth prize in 2022 Rachmaninoff International Competition, finalists in 4th Basel Composition Competition and 2nd Luciano Berio Composition Competition. Some of her works have been published.This is a work that celebrates courage and fearlessness, and brave people will always struggle against great odds and meet dilemma undaunted.![]()
Chloe Liuyan Liu is a composer who earned her Master of Music in Music Composition fromIndiana University in May 2023, following her Bachelor of Music in Composition at Wheaton College in 2021. She achieved recognition by winning the Global Music Award, the Schultheis Composition Competition Award, and the Josephine Halvorsen Memorial Composition Prize. She also received third place in the 2024 American Prize (Vocal Chamber Division). Liu has studied composition under mentors such as Shawn Okpebeholo, Xavier Beteta, David Dzubay, Annie Gosfield, and Han Lash. She also pursued a minor in computer music under the direction of John Gibson and Chi Wang. During her time at Indiana University, she focused on interactive music with data-driven instruments for her computer music compositions. Outside of academia, she composes Chinese pop music and soundtracks for short films and games.Please Don't Mourn Me, I've Gone on a Journey *Finalist of the 2nd musicON Composition Competition ( above Age 18 )Chloe Liuyan Liu is a composer who earned her Master of Music in Music Composition from Indiana University in May 2023, following her Bachelor of Music in Composition at Wheaton College in 2021. She achieved recognition by winning the Global Music Award, the Schultheis Composition Competition Award, and the Josephine Halvorsen Memorial Composition Prize.She also received third place in the 2024 American Prize (Vocal Chamber Division). Liu has studied composition under mentors such as Shawn Okpebeholo, Xavier Beteta, David Dzubay, Annie Gosfield, and Han Lash. She also pursued a minor in computer music under the direction of John Gibson and Chi Wang. During her time at Indiana University, she focused on interactivemusic with data-driven instruments for her computer music compositions. Outside of academia,she composes Chinese pop music and soundtracks for short films and games.
Jenny Yu (USA)
Jenny Yu, 12 years old, has been studying piano for six years and violin for five years. She began studying composition at the age of 8 with Mr. Yiming Wu. She won 2nd prize at Franz Shubert Music Conservatory composition competition; 3rd place at the Golden Key Music Festival 2022. She was selected as the Emerging composer of 2021 and 2022 Tribeca New Music Young Composer competition. She also takes part in Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras. Besides playing the piano and violin, Jenny enjoys painting, white water kayaking, ice skating, and biking.
Musical Passport
"Musical Passport" takes listeners on a captivating global auditory adventure.The journey begins in Ireland, where the lively sounds of bagpipes and the spirited jig of parade dancers fill the streets. We soar over the lush landscapes of Ireland and touch down in the ancient sands of Egypt.Here, desert music greets us as we ride camels near the awe-inspiring Pyramids.Next, our travels take us to Mexico, where the vibrant rhythms of traditional Mariachi music pulse through a bustling fiesta. Singers and dancers join in joyous celebration as we board our plane once more, heading to China.In a serene teahouse, the delicate notes of the pentatonic scale accompany the graceful dance of dragons swirling through the air. Finally, the fragrant scent of jasmine carries us back to the USA, where our musical journey concludes with a triumphant flourish.
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Ziyuan Wang (China)
Wang Ziyuan was admitted to the Middle School Attached to the Central Conservatory of Music with excellent results in 2020, and has studied composition systematically under Professor Chen Xinruo and Professor Yao Chen of the Composition Department. His art song "Master" won two awards of "Excellent Original Works Award" and "Most Potential Composer" in the collection of original music works of 2022 Central Music Exhibition. "Crying Bird" for flute, pipa and three string trios was successfully staged at the Central Conservatory of Music High School in June this year.
Ripple *Finalist of the 2nd musicON Composition Competition (Age 18 and under)
The duo was composed for violin and violoncello. The composer does not pursue the complexity of sound and technique, but only develops the overtone as the core of the whole song, and builds a circuitous melody with natural overtones. Allegro passages become dense, with long overtones alternating with solid phrases. The music eventually disappears in a weeping adagio, like a lonely lament."Water" is the favorite theme in the composer's creation, which is both open-minded and tender, and contains all forms in the intangible. This element represents the composer's dialectical thinking on the relationship between man and nature.
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Yiheng Li is a music composer currently based in Singapore. Born in 2006, he has always had a passion for music, particularly for playing the piano, which he began lessons for when he was 6 years old.Currently serving his full time national service with the Singapore Civil Defence Force, Yiheng will be going to Stanford University to study Computer Science as well as Music Composition after hisconscription. Yiheng is a truly diverse musician. He has composed works for solo, chamber, orchestra and a film score to a short-animated film. Outside of conventional concert music, Yiheng has a love for jazz as well as Japanese pop/rock music. In addition to composing in a concert context, Yiheng has been starting to his craft in electronic dance music as composing pop songs utilizing Vocaloid.Sonata for cello and piano * Commissioned work by the musicON FestivalSonata for Cello and Piano is a chamber work conceived in 2024. Moderato is the first movement to this work.This movement expresses my personal experience with infatuation - the joy, the excitement and the nervousness I experienced during my period of infatuation with somebody. I found that thedeep voice of the cello expressed this perfectly. Initially dedicated to a cellist, the piece was abandoned from completion in an immature manner. However later on, I instead used that experience as the foundation and inspiration for this piece of music, and went on to complete the composition.
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Praised for her "individual and strong voice" (Colin Clarke,Fanfare Magazine), composer Natalie Draper explores character and evocative sound-worlds in her music. She has written works for a variety of ensembles and performers, including organist Anne Laver, Albany Symphony's Dogs of Desire, Beth Willer and Peabody Institute's NEXT Ensemble, and Grammy-nominated pianist Kara Huber. Draper's music has been included on recordings by pianist Mirna Lekić, Akropolis Reed Quintet, soprano Danielle Buonaiuto, and Symphony Number One. She has been featured in articles in Vox Humana, I Care If You Listen, and Van Magazine. Draper has held residencies and fellowships at the Ucross Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, the I-Park Foundation, Yaddo, and St. David's Episcopal Church in Baltimore, MD. She is an assistant professor in the music theory and composition department at the Setnor School of Music at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.SONNETS for Soprano & Small Ensemble * Commissioned work by the musicON FestivalSonnets was commissioned by Mayflower Art Center. My sincere thanks to him for the support. This piece interprets three of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnets, all of which deal with loss.
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Charles Chen is a composer and violinist from Maryland who is fascinated by how music is able to convey life experiences and emotions. As a violinist, He currently plays in his high school orchestra and has participated in orchestra programs such as MCYO, All County, and Young Artists of America. As a composer, Charles is interested in exploring on aspects of natural evolutions and phenomenons that occur in the world and outer space, ranging from landscape changes to cosmic dramas. Currently, his music has received awards/recognitions from competitions such as MTNA, Tribeca, Downbeat, and ASCAP.Evolving Landscapes is inspired by the serene tranquility of Earth’s natural landscapes. It reflects on natural dynamics, environment, and interaction. The piece starts by depicting beautiful weather and natural views, and then later represents a paradise that goes through natural changes with new flowers blossoming, streams carving in new channels, and new land formations appearing. The changes enhance the current biodiversity by promoting opportunities to restore degraded environments and improve the quality of life.
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Hi! My name is Stephen Cai, a rising senior at Scarsdale High School. I am 16 years old and I'm aspiring to major in robotics and music. I'm grateful for the opportunity to share my piece in this year's musicON Festival, and I hope you enjoy my piece, A Fallen Sky. I have been playing piano and flute/piccolo for 11 years and 8 years, respectively, and I learned oboe for our school band's spring concert two years ago. I have independently written five works that our school's band has performed, and I am learning to write contemporary music for large ensembles. I look forward to listening to and writing more music in the future!A FALLEN SKY for piano and string quartet was written to discuss the advent of modern technology, in which the piece’s unique and colorful sections illustrate the story of a different civilization, whose world was ripped apart by the very technology that helped it advance. The composition’s thick textures and scarce melodic sections chronicle the story of this world, suffering the takeover by mechanical beings. As a composer, one of the more wonderful things about creating works is the freedom to experiment with novel sounds and ideas. This piece is the final draft of three experimental sections that I wrote separately and then wove together.
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Andrew Xu is a composer and pianist based in New York. His music takes inspiration from abstract concepts, particularly in art, literature, and philosophy. He is currently studying composition at Juilliard Pre-College with Dr. Manuel Sosa. Andrew’s works have been recognized and premiered by New York State School Music Association, NPR’s From the Top, Kodak Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Emissary Quartet, and PHACE Ensemble. Andrew has also participated in various festivals, having been accepted into Vienna Contemporary Composers Festival, Juilliard Summer Composition, and Boston University Tanglewood Institute. He continues to expand his creative expression in the realm of contemporary-classical music.Rumination *Finalist of the 2nd musicON Composition Competition (Age 18 and under)Rumination is inspired from an abstract concept: the distress, negative energy, and conflicting emotions in our minds. The piece begins with a cold, bleak atmosphere and escalates to a tempestuous state before returning to the slow, overarching theme as the conflicting emotions fizzle out. Throughout Rumination, I have used chromatic harmony to create shifts in emotions while also incorporating extended techniques inside the piano to represent thoughts that come and go as the mind contemplates.
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Yiming Jia (b. 2006) is a composer and clarinetist at Dougherty Valley High School. He studies under Wang Lu and Yiming Wu and has received awards such as ASCAP Morton Gould Finalist, Tribeca Young Composer Competition Honorable Mention, NFMC National Junior Composers Contest 2nd Place Winner, Hayes School of Music Composition Competition Winner (Band Division), and Golden Key Composition Competition Senior 2nd Place Winner. He also attended the Juilliard Summer Composition Program over the summer of 2024 where he had his piece Chase for a Bygone Memory performed. Aside from composition, he has also participated in a variety of events such as All Northern and All State Honor Band in California for both Bb and Eb clarinet.Liberosis is a piece that doesn't focus on the end result of carelessness, but rather the process of getting there. Throughout the piece, there are many small climaxes that indicate the desire to forget and loosen everything, but this tension keeps coming back again and again. In sections where the piece calms down, there's still a feeling of unease that suggests that the feeling of anxiousness has not fully perished.Throughout my life and many others, we have thoughts of anxiety that come up when important events occur. I createdthis piece to illustrate the difficulty of loosening one's grip on their thoughts, but also the process it takes to finally achieve the result.
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Akira Nishimura (Japan) *The tribute composer of musiON FestivalAkira Nishimura(西村朗, Nishimura Akira, 8 September 1953 – 7 September 2023) was a Japanese composer from Osaka. Nishimura won several national and international awards, including the 36th Suntory Music Award (2004), and was commissioned by many overseas music festivals. His style consistently relied on a modal sense. When Heterophony for String Quartet was performed for the first time, he felt strongly that the tone selection at the beginning of the piece was strange, so much so that he immediately rewrote it into a modal version.[1] Along with Joe Kondo, Nishimura has a wealth of recordings of his own works, but Nishimura also has many important works that are not included in his discography, such as Guren and From the Edge of Manra. In his later years, he wrote new works for the world of wind instruments Nishimura was the judge at the 2007 Tōru Takemitsu composition award.
PULSE OF THE LIGHTS
This work was composed in 1992 by Akira Nishimura at the age of 38 for the Aditi String Quartet and dedicated to them.
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Yikeshan Abudushalamu (China)
Yikeshan Abudushalamu (b. 1985) is a Uyghur composer from Urumqi, Xinjiang, China. He earned both his bachelor’s (2008-2013) and master’s (2015-2019) degrees in composition from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where he is currently a PhD candidate under the guidance of Professor Shirui Zhu. As an exchange student (2012-2013), he also studied at the Haute École de Musique de Genève. His awards include winning the Luciano Berio International Composition Competition (2019) and the Shanghai 2nd Rivers Awards Composition Competition (2010), among others.Rift * Commissioned work by the musicON FestivalRift explores the interactive possibilities of three textures - fragmented, static, and periodic. These contrasting elements shape the piece’s development, creating tension and transformation. The title, chosen after the work’s completion, reflects the variations, divisions, and contrasts between these textures, highlighting their structural role in the music.▼ 2024 musicON音乐节演奏家及歌唱家（共25人）![]()
▼直播预告
YouTube：美国国家歌剧院National Opera Center官方YouTube频道将为此次2024 musicON音乐节系列音乐会提供全程直播服务，请大家持续关注频道https://www.youtube.com/user/NatOperaCenterLIVE
微信视频号：本场音乐会将于北京时间10月26日上午7:30在微信视频号musiCON声先进行全球同步直播，欢迎广大乐迷届时观看。
