Yao Chen In works of various dimensions, YAO Chen seeks paths toward transcendence. His music, always ritual in nature, eschews contemporary vogues and instead aims at a timelessness and an otherness that exists beyond the standard categories – music for the moment, but also music for then and music for what lies ahead. Whether his work is brittle or forceful, or often both in coexistence, melancholy and a sense of wonder are recurring characteristics, as is an internationalist orientation grounded in a quest for maximal musical meaning. His perceptions on musical time, timbre, intonation, pulsation, and expression are always at frontiers: between the old and the new, between the East and the West, between irrational mysticism and rational logic. While devoting himself mainly to the field of contemporary art music, YAO also experiments with other genres, writing music for films and theatre productions. Cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary concepts permeate his creative inspiration and compositional output, presenting his understanding of the value of new music in enlivening global cultures.
His creative vision and aesthetic pursuit have resulted in his many compositions, such as Two Poems for orchestra, the instrumental theatre piece Paramita, the three-act environmental theatre piece Playing the Opera on Pipa: Romance of the Western Chamber, and many Chinese-Western mixed instrumental works including Tsanglang…Tsanglang for flute, zheng and viola, Yearning for zheng and double bass, Jun for pipa and double bass. These pieces not only demonstrate his talent in navigating situations covering a wide emotional spectrum and dramaturgical elements in music writing, but also reveal his versatility in structuring musical forms that embrace mixed instruments, musical languages and styles.
In recent years, his music has received a significant amount of recognition in many distinguished international arenas. His music has been performed by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (Grammy winner), Orchestre National de Lorraine, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, China Philharmonic，ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Pacifica String Quartet (Grammy Winner), Quatuor Diotima, eighth blackbird (Grammy winner), Tang Quartet, Civitas Ensemble (from Chicago Symphony Orchestra), Camerata Woodwind Quintet, Quintet of the Americas, New Fromm Players, Earplay Ensemble, Israel Contemporary Players, Conundrum, Wild Rumpus New Music Collective, TianYing Chinese Ensemble, Beijing New Music Ensemble, etc. YAO has collaborated with countless artists, including conductors Cliff Colnot, Jacques Mercier,Rei Hotoda, Chen Lin, and Lio Kuokman, violin virtuoso Siow Lee-Chin and He Wei, viola virtuoso Yunjie(Jay) Liu, Xu Peijun and Veit Hertemstein double bassists DaXun Zhang, Michael Cameron and Chen Han-Jui, sopranos Tony Arnold and Allison Angelo, flutists Denis Bouriakov and Clara Novakova, pianist Nareh Arghamanyan, bayan-players Luo Han and Stanislav Venglevski, harpist Nicolas Tulliez, Chinese pipa-players Yang Wei and Lan Weiwei, marimba virtuoso Wen-Chen Lin, Chinese bamboo flutist Zhang Weiliang, zheng player Yu-Chen Wang, Kun Opera singer Lu Jia and Xiao Xiangping.
