"One flower blooming alone does not signal spring; it is when a hundred flowers bloom that spring fills the entire garden." Spring Reflected in Ming Lake, a chamber music piece, draws inspiration from the six solar terms of spring and ancient poetry related to these seasons. Through a musical and pictorial approach, it beautifully depicts the spring scenery of Daming Lake. The work centers around the aesthetics of ethnic music, employs impressionistic compositional techniques, and utilizes a combination of Eastern and Western orchestration to express its ideas. It draws from different levels and dimensions of traditional cultural meaning, blending modernity, nationality, and originality into a cohesive whole. Rooted in the essence of excellent traditional music culture and emphasizing folk cultural features, the piece portrays natural scenes such as spring sunlight, spring rain, spring thunder, and spring mist on Daming Lake through six short movements.

The specific movements are: Lichun (Beginning of Spring), Yushui (Rain Water), Jingzhe (Waking of Insects), Chunfen (Spring Equinox), Qingming (Clear and Bright), and Guyu (Grain Rain).

The Spring of DA Ming Lake

The work adopts the orchestral and symphonic transformation of Chinese folk music as its musical expression, creatively transforming and innovatively developing the excellent traditional Chinese culture. It combines artistic musical creativity with the values and aesthetic spirit of Chinese culture, carefully crafting a national orchestral composition that praises the people and celebrates the mountains and rivers.

The Song of Mountains and Rivers

In the summer, there is an amazing landscape and wether in grassland. The wind is soft, the cloud is white, the sky is blue and the land is green. People enjoy their happiness life. They usually play music and dance after a picnic. Everybody laughs, drinks, singings and dances. There is no sufferings and darkness. It is a wonderland called Grassland.

The music of Summer of Grassland is based on the Mongolia dance music. The melody is not only Mongolia pentatonic scale but also combine with some non-chord tones and western harmony system. Composer also put some Jazz element in this piece.

The Summer Of Grassland

A clip of Morin khuur Recording for my unfinished piece

Misty Bamboo Paths MIDI

Melanocorypha mongolica

Mirage MIDI

This piece describes an imaginary adventure to Banaue Rice Terraces: a traveler is traveling cross the Banaue Rice Terraces in the silent night. Suddenly, the traveler wanders into an unknown area where smoke permeates the air. As the traveler walking in the smoke, he/she has lost the sight of surrounding scenes. The wind brings faintest sounds to the traveler’s ears and guides him/her to walk deep into the darkness. While the traveler is walking towards the sound, he/she hears someone playing exotic music ahead of him/her. As the music becomes louder, the traveler starts searching for the musician(s) who plays the music. However, the traveler could not find the musicians, even though the music seems to be played only steps away. The traveler is so scary and bursts into the scream. Instantaneously, all the sound disappears, and the smoke drifts away. Silence fills the Banaue Rice Terraces again.

Vanishing

Nài Hé

The River Of Departing

Program Notes:      The piece, Tracing Shadows, is commissioned by the Barnett Symposium and to be premiered in the Sullivant Hall Rotunda on Sept 28, 2018. Remember when I ﬁrst stood at the center of the rotunda hall and closed my eyes, the faint sound from outside street and the echo reverberated from the walls of the hall reminded me of a journey to an immemorial cave on in my hometown—Inner Mongolia. In the cave, I was surrounded by mysterious fresco paintings and a variety of natural sound: the rustling of the wind, the dripping sound of water, etc. Inspired by the magniﬁcent acoustic design of the concert hall, this piece expressed my musical imagination of an ancient cave on the Yin Mountain in Inner Mongolia, China, both in natural and spiritual realms.

Tracing Shadows

Hùn Dùn

Binshan Zhao (b: 1989) received his doctor degree in composition at the Ohio State University in 2019. He was born in Inner Mongolia, China and growing up with Mongolian folk music and western classical music. He got his B.A. in composition from Tianjin Conservatory of Music in 2012 and M.M. in composition from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2016. His composition teachers include Zheliang Zhao, Mark Engebretson, Alejandro Rutty, Steven Bryant and Thomas Wells. Being inspired by multiple contemporary music styles, Binshan creates his sound based on his music culture background and creativity thoughts. His music displays a variety of music styles: electronic music, minimalism, microtonality, serialism, spectralism. musical visualization, etc. His pieces were performed or read in several different countries. He was selected as the composer of commission for the Barnett Symposium 2018 and the OSU Symphony Orchestra Composer-in-Residence for 2018-2019. He also won 2020 The Academia Musica of Vienna International Composer Prize, 3rd Class Award of Orchestra.
Binshan currently works in Shandong University, China with his wife,  music theorist, Luyin Shao. He lives as a composer and actives in many music events in North America and China.

Zhao, Binshan 赵彬杉 (Composer)

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