I chose Oscar Wilde’s short story, The Nightingale and the Rose (about a nightingale who sacrifices her life to create a red rose for love), for my opera for its fantasy, wit, and expectation-defying tropes. This ...

“Piper in the Woods” is a one act opera for six principal singers plus SATB chorus, along with an ensemble of nine instrumentalists. The piece is based on a short story of the same name by Philip K. Dick. First published ...

In this work I have created sounds to represent a series of events that signify the apocalypse in Buddhism, the day that seven suns appear in the sky. It is said to bring about the end of this old, present world. No ...

This quartet features a transparent structure in which a dense, static ensemble motif gradually and smoothly transforms into a highly active and agitated counter-motif. This process repeats twice: with each iteration, ...

Masks is inspired by a type of Chinese opera called Chuanju, which comes from the Sichuan region in southwest China. In Chuanju, each character has his or her own type of face makeup. For example, semi-transparent makeup ...

“Five Ekmousikés” is a multi-movement work composed for solo piano, dedicated to and to be premiered by my grandmother, Dr. Janet Bass Smith. Each movement in this work is programmatically tied to a piece of extra-musical ...

The Awakening of Insects is the third of the twenty-four solar terms in the traditional Chinese calendars. In China, people believe that during this solar term, thunderstorms will wake up the hibernating insects, indicating ...

My orchestral piece, Memories of My Hometown, has two movements: I. Pine Trees Standing on the Snowy Mountain; II. Passionate Land. After studying abroad for many years, I yearned for my hometown in China and hoped to ...

Symphonic Poem No. 1, Poems on Stone Drums is an orchestral piece with three main sections played in a single continuous movement. Its inspiration comes from a set of ancient Chinese seal scripts on ten drum-shaped ...

The Birth of the Eternal is a one-movement composition for string orchestra, piano and percussion. It is written as a centennial commemoration of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and honors the memory of the victims of the ...

This thesis explores the mechanics of musical composition and orchestration through the lens of an orchestral tone poem. The work presents various musical materials with characteristics and qualities in accordance ...

Compromise (Fusion) (for suona and orchestra) is a work that delves into the chemistry between the suona and a Western approach to orchestration. The suona has not yet been fully “discovered” by composers. Traditionally, ...

(asymmetries of matter) is a work for chamber ensemble comprised of voice, trumpet, trombone and bass clarinet, as well as a series of four shorter solo works, one for each instrument of the ensemble, that are embedded ...

As a composer originally from South Korea who favors Western musical languages as a medium for composition, it has always been my passion to create works that integrate my Korean culture in some way. Sometimes I combine ...

The single movement symphonic poem Daughter of Bird and Earth draws its inspiration from my own long poem in modern Chinese, The Resurrection of Poems, which narrates an imaginary woman’s life journey, both internally and ...

From my perspective, the beauty of life lies in its tenacity and endlessness. This beauty is especially reflected in the flowers that grow in the cracks in the rocks. It takes a lot of ups and downs to breakthrough. ...

The Book of Psalms in the Old Testament is a collection of 150 ancient lyrical poems intended for prayer and worship of the Jehovah God. The title is derived from the Greek word Psalmoi, which stands for “words sung to a ...

This piece is inspired by "Meditation XVII”, a poem written by John Donne in 1624. It appears in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Seuerall Steps in my Sicknes. The opening line is: "PERCHANCE he for whom this ...

A Remedy for Death is a three-movement composition for mixed ensemble, which is inspired by the love of God in the bible. The first movement, “The Fall of Man”, is based on the book of Genesis chapter ...

“To see a world in a wild flower, to see yourself like a bodhi in a leaf”, this philosophical reflection springs from writings within the Vimalakirti Sutra. It claims that all phenomena have no root or result, without its ...