LI, Yuan-Chen
LI, Yuan-Chen
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Li first arrived on the contemporary music scene in Taiwan with her very personal use of instrumentation and style in her chamber music piece Zang (the funeral) in 2000. In 2003, the expression and orchestration of her orchestral work Awakening won the prize at the Asian Music Festival 2003 in Tokyo from the Asian Composers'League, and was subsequently premiered by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. In recent years, Li's music reflects her transformation of processes and concepts in Chinese phonology, Taiwanese chamber and aboriginal music, Asian traditional arts, literature, and Buddhism into a compositional technique for solo, chamber, and orchestra of both Western and Chinese instruments, offering new experience to her audience and collaborators with the cross-cultural and cross-disciplined approach to musical time, space, and drama. With her virtuosity in instrumentation and fluency in converging and synthesizing contrastingly cultural, musical and conceptual ideas, her treatment of the space of the sonority, temporality, texture, and syntax have engaged musicians of different practices, critics, researchers, and worldwide listeners.
Featuring her distinct artistry in different contexts, Li's work has been programmed in many concert series and festivals: EarTaxi New Music Festival (Chicago, 2016), American Composers Orchestra's EarShot (Buffalo, 2015), Northwestern University Institute for New Music NUNC! (Chicago, 2014), Asian Composers'League (Tel-Aviv 2012, Tokyo 2003), 2012 Thailand International Composition Festival, IMANI Winds Chamber Music Festival (New York, 2012), Contempo series (University of Chicago, 2010-2015), Peace Cross-strait Orchestra Concert (China and Taiwan, 2009), Composers/Pianists concert series (New England, 2008-9), New Music New Haven (Yale, 2006-08), The Female Form: Women Composers (New York, 2008), Listening to the 21Century (Taipei, 2007), Soundbridges (Berlin, 2007), Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Norfolk, 2007), Tune in to Taiwan 2003 (Taipei, 2003), New Ideal Dance Festival (Taipei, 2003), and Kuan-Du Musical Soiree (Taipei, 2001).
Major honors and awards include an Artist Residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2010, Taipei Artist Village), grants from the National Culture and Arts Foundation of Taiwan, the Ezra Laderman Prize, the Rena Greenwalk Memorial Prize, Finalist, Martirano Award 2016, First prize of Literature and Art Creation Award (Taiwan), the Chang-Hui Hsu Memorial Prize of Asian Composers League, Study Abroad Scholarship from the Education Minister (Taiwan), and Scholarship of Arts from Tzu Chi Foundation. Recent commissions are from the Yale-Taiwan Music Group, National Performing Arts Center (Taiwan), and soloists such as harpist Li-Ya Huang, and clarinetist Tsai-Pei Lun.
Li received Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Chicago in 2015. Her primary advisors are composers such as Marta Ptaszynska and Shulamit Ran, conductor Cliff Colnot, musicologist Martha Feldman, and theorist Lawrence Zbikowski. Before her residence in Chicago, Li earned the Artist Diploma from the Yale University. Her dissertation "Wandering Viewpoint," a concerto for solo cello and two ensembles, is about maintaining the freedom and the independence of the soloist in a highly assimilated texture and sound competed by two ensembles of similar instrumentations, which The piece receives review that Li's compositional voice "original and somewhat difficult to describe," "engaging" (Chicago Classical Review, 2015.4.24). Accompanied with her Ph.D. degree is a paper entitled "Difficult Voice in Vocal Composition, Composers'Aesthetic Responses to Secondhand Holocaust Experiences," featuring three case studies, such as Chaya Czernowin's opera Pnima…ins innere, Meredith Monk’s theater opera Quarry, and Schoenberg A Survivor from Warsaw, using psychoanalytic theory to discuss musical transgenerational phenomenon of the post-war music. Li also holds Artist Diploma from The Yale University School of Music (2008), studying composition with Martin Bresnick, and M.F.A. (2006) and B.F.A.(2003) from Taipei University of the Arts, having studied composition and theory with Tsung-Hsien Yang and Chung-Kun Hung. Before entering college she studied composition and classical music for ten years with Ting-Lien Wu.
Committed to cultivate the combination of new music composition, interpretation, and community, she has frequently collaborated with Paul Ching-Po Chiang, conductor of Moment Musicaux Philharmonia (Taiwan), National Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan), and Chinese ensemble Chai-Found Music Workshop (Taiwan). Since 2011, Li has been mentored by Maestro Cliff Colnot, from whom she has been introduced to professional notation, rehearsal techniques, and editorial work for orchestra, chamber music and songs. In 2016-2017, she held a visiting professor position at Reed College (Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.), teaching advanced harmony (Atonal Music), form and analysis, composition, seminar on East Asian new music, and conducting the college orchestra.
Title | Instrumentation | Year | Duration | NCAF-funded |
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Iluwan | 3(1/picc,2, 3/al).2(1,2/Eng.Hrn).2(1,2/bcl).2(1,2/contra). – 2.2.2.0 – timp-2P. – hp. – strgs. | 2016 | 9'22" | |
Wandering Viewpoint | Concerto for Solo Cello and Two Ensembles: solo cello, 2 fl. (1,2/al.), 2 cl.(1,2/bass), 2 vln., 2 vla., 2 vc., 1 perc, 1 pno. | 2015 | 15' | |
On Aldebaran | 2(1,2/pic).2(1,2/Eng.Hrn).2(1,2/bcl).2. – 2.2. – 2P. – hp. – strgs. | 2014 | 7'30" | |
Hovering in the Air | Concerto for guzheng and string orchestra | 2011 | 15' | |
Intermezzo: SHANG | 2(1,2/pic).2.2(1,2/bcl).2(1,2/cb). – 2.2.2. – T.2P. – hp. – strgs. | 2011 | 18'20" | |
Like A Dream, An Illusion | 3(1,2,3/pic).3.3.3. – 4.3.3.1. – 4P – hp.cel.orgl. – strgs (65443 by stands), balcony: fl.hp.vln. | 2007 | 12'30" | |
Awakening | 4(1,2,3,pic).3(1,2,eh.).3(1,2,bcl).3(1,2,cb). – 4.3.3.1. – 4P. – 2hp. – strgs (87554 by stands). | 2003 | 14'30" |
Title | Instrumentation | Year | Duration | NCAF-funded |
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Mist, Three Pomes by Carl Sandburg) | mezzo-sp & pno | 2016 | 6'30" | |
Mong Huan Pao Ying | 4S4A4T4B, with or without four percussionists. | 2008 | 7' | |
Three Pomes by Rabindranath Tagore | sp, fl, pno, and vc. | 2007 | 12' | |
Three Pomes by Shyi Mu-Rong | sp & pno. | 2000 | 10' |
Title | Instrumentation | Year | Duration | NCAF-funded |
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Rain Noir Noir | fl, vc, and hp. | 2017 | 15' | |
Dolphin 'n' Cat | pno. duo | 2015 | 8' | |
Harmony | vln & orgl | 2014 | 3' | |
Aldebaran | fl/picc, cl/bs cl, vln, vc, pno, perc. | 2013 | 6'30" | |
Fauna Republic | fl/pic, ob, cl/bs cl, bsn, hrn, 4 perc (total 9 musicians). | 2013 | 8' | |
Ice Crackle Glaze | fl, vln, hp, vib, and pno. | 2011 | 8' | |
Motion 2010 | strg. quartet | 2010 | 11'30" | |
Cats' Romp | guzheng & pno. | 2008 | 9'30" | |
Ring | perc. quartet | 2008 | 11' | |
Butterfly | fl, ob, cl, bsn, and pno | 2007 | 8' | |
Reminiscence | kb & pno. | 2006 | 10'30" | |
The Morning Bell and the Evening Drum | perc. duo | 2006 | 17' | |
Adagio for Promenade | fl, hp, organ, and vln. | 2005 | 12' | |
Intermezzo: Tsan | fl, ob, cl, vib, hp, pf, cel, vn, vla, kb and guqin (Chinese 7-string zither) | 2005 | 13'30" | |
The Funeral (aka, Zang) | ob, pipa, perc, and kb. | 2000 | 17' |
Title | Instrumentation | Year | Duration | NCAF-funded |
---|---|---|---|---|
Shadows of the Lonely Phoenix | cl. | 2016 | 12' | |
Shivering Winds, Serene Sky (aka.Tian jing sha) | vc. | 2014 | 6'20" | |
Youth Yet Young | pno. | 2012 | 6' | |
Migoh | pno. | 2007 | 4'30" | |
Cat's Romp | guzheng | 2003 | 6' | |
Hy | pno. | 2003 | 10' | |
Spell (aka. Ling) | al. Sax or (b) clarinet or (c) bass flute |
Title | Instrumentation | Year | Duration | NCAF-funded |
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The Dead of Winter | Piano Improvisation for Video | 2013 | ||
The Upper Hallway | Score for modern dance: piano | 2013 | ||
Folksong - Homage to Formosa | fl, cl, 2p, hp, mezzo, vla, and vc (same instrumentation as Berio’s Folk Songs). | 2010 | 30' | |
ELEVEN | Score for modern dance: ob, pno, perc, and tape | 2009 | 15' | |
Hakka Folk Song Cycle | 客家民間歌手與國樂團 | 2006 | 42' |
* link to " NCAF online Archive of Grant Fruitages "website (in Chinese)
Title | Instrumentation | Year | Duration |
---|---|---|---|
Shadows of the Lonely Phoenix | cl. | 2016 | 12' |
Hovering in the Air | Concerto for guzheng and string orchestra | 2011 | 15' |