At the Chamber Music Northwest festival this month, composer Bright Sheng (in photo) and librettist David Henry Hwang’s 1997 opera The Silver River will make its Oregon debut, “with the composer in town to see it,” writes Brett Campbell in Friday’s (7/13) Oregonian (Portland). “Chamber Music Northwest is also using ‘The Silver River’ as the tentpole for a five-day celebration of Chinese-influenced music, ‘Beyond the Cultural Revolution.’ Back in the ‘90s, Chamber Music Northwest administrators blanched when they looked at the [complex] forces required for Sheng’s opera…. This version runs just over an hour, with lower-cost props (no water tank). ‘Sometimes having less of a budget stimulates the imagination more,’ Sheng said, chuckling…. ‘Beyond the Cultural Revolution’s’ other concerts .…include … Chinese-American composer Zhou Long’s ‘Taiping Drum’; University of Oregon percussion professor Pius Cheung’s solo ‘Nian 3’; solo pipa music; and young composer Kai-Young Chan’s string quartet ‘Ignis fatuus.’ … Taiwanese American violinist Cho-Liang Lin plays Sheng’s ‘The Stream Flows’ and clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois joins Daedalus Quartet for Chinese Canadian composer Vivian Fung’s ‘Frenetic Memories,’ a Chamber Music Northwest commission. Both pieces are based on folk tunes the composers heard in China.”
Posted July 17, 2018
