In Qi, I used a mixed combination of western instruments, to create the sound from east, to express my feelings of the Qi abstractly — it’s so untouchable, so mysterious, but so strong and powerful. It melts into air and light, it’s like the space in Chinese paintings, it’s filled into the dancing lines in Chinese calligraphy, it’s the spirit in the human mind. In my composition, I translate my general feeling of the Qi, the element of nature, into my musical language in a quite free and slow tempo. There are also exaggerated textures with tension, in which I try to sound the inner voices and spirit of human beings, to experience this eternal power.

Commissioned and premiered by the New Music Consort of New York, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and Los Angeles Philharmonic Association with a grant provided by the Meet The Composer/Reader’s Digest consortium commissioning program, the quartet is entitled Qi, and was recorded on CRI under the title “Sparkle: Chamber Music of Chen Yi,” released in New York in 1999. I have dedicated the work to Prof. Chou Wen-Chung on his 75th birthday in 1998, to express my deep gratitude to his mentorship in my composition concept and artistic thoughts.

—Chen Yi

 

“…a marvelous hybrid piece … her music…spans vast cultural spaces with a most endearing, easy grace.”

—Alan Rich, LA Weekly

 

“…another of her fascinating cultural interweavings, a poetic essay marked by dynamic extremes and textural imagination.”

—Josef Woodard, Los Angeles Times

 

“…thrilling...exhilarating. As ever with this formidable composer, the music draws on traditional Chinese sonorities, transforming them and putting them into service of a fiercely dramatic formal plan.”

—San Fancisco Chronicle



“… a glittering, kinetic juggernaut of a piece, said yet more about the immense talent of the Chinese-born Chen Yi…”

—Richard Buell, Boston Globe, 10/27/99

 

“… the improvisational fantasy of Chen Yi’s lovely Qi… translates the essence of [Chinese] culture into Western instruments, tapping into their aggressive quality for dramatic impact and using snappy underlying riffs as a means of unity.”

—David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer, 11/15/03

 

“This dazzling work, a sonic depiction of life force by one of the most talented of a group of recent Chinese émigré composers, combines Western and Asian sonorities and aesthetics.”

—Frank J. Oteri, Chamber Music Magazine, June 2000