Pilot whale click whistle and burst communication

白海豚之家 

白海豚所生活的海洋是甚麼樣子的? 在混濁的海中只能仰賴聽覺了解一切，海表面下的浪花、雨聲、水流聲，透漏了所在之處的環境與位置，更聽見了各種海洋生物活動的蹤跡。聽著哨聲在旅途中尋找同伴，社交之外也合作覓食，但記得小心高速開過的船隻，不注意的話可是會命喪黃泉的。越來越頻繁的噪音，降低了聽到同伴聲音的機會，也減少了利用聲音來尋找食物的效率。這是白海豚的家園，一個正受到噪音侵蝕的海洋。

Home Of Humpback Dolphins

Live performance of the US Premiere of Chen Yi's viola concerto, Xian Shi, with Michael Hall, viola and the Chicago Composers Orchestra. Matthew Kasper, conductor.  Xian Shi is the first viola concerto written by a Chinese composer. 

Chen Yi –  "Xian Shi" Concerto for viola and orchestra. American Premiere

Sperm whales codas /creaks

performed on march 12, 2016 at the university of chicago 
for buchla music easel and tape 

Improvisation on Ushas (Sender)

Live recording from the premiere. April 24, 2016, University of Maryland. 
Spektral Quartet (Austin Wulliman, Clara Lyon, Doyle Armbrust, Russell Rolen) + Claire Chase (flutes)

The Real Book of Fake Tunes (2015), mvt 1

Musicians of the Wellesley Composers Conference. James Baker, conductor. Live performance, 7/23/16.

Snowlight Sketch for sinfonietta (2016)

A single iteration of what researchers called “bowhead song No. 28” from the 2013-14 season, recorded Dec. 30, 2013, in Fram Strait.

Bowhead Whale Song

Rain Noir Noir | 雨黑黑 (2018)
For Harp Trio
Performers: Liya Huang/Harp (黃立雅), I-Jeng Yeh/Flute (葉怡礽), and Kyu-Ri Jim/Cello (金窺利)

Commissioned by harpist Liya Huang, Rain Noir Noir shows Li’s exploration of musical language to minimalism and improvisation, stretching the fragments of the folk tune “Tien Hey Hey” (Cloudy Day) to a multi-moment set of trio. The atmospheric, humorous, and tender side of Li’s musicianship is very well spoken by the musicians, handpicked by Liya from the China National Center for the Performing Arts Orchestra which she herself serves as the principal harpist.

#39 Rian Noir Noir for harp trio

Dolphin whistles recorded at deep seafloor

Tanner Springs Park is northwest of downtown Portland, near highways, train stations, and the Willamette River, surrounded by trams for three sides and low-to- high rise residential buildings around four sides. The theme of the park is its wetland history, revealing the scene once alive from the past. Guided by Portland-based composer Yuan-Chen Li, this Soundwalk imagines the process of sedimentation for the participants. Sporadically accompanied by the composer’s "musical signage," the 40-minute guided promenade brings the participants to understand the turbulent sound of traffic activity, the harmony of singing water and raindrops, ending in the joyful discovery and exploration of one’s inner space interacting with different materials built for the park.

Sonic Sedimentation - A Soundwalk in Tanner Springs Park by Yuan-Chen Li

Li first arrived on the contemporary music scene in Taiwan with her very original 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 Asian traditional arts, literature, and Buddhism into a compositional technique for solo, chamber, and orchestra of both Western and Chinese instruments. With her virtuosity in instrumentation and fluency in converging and synthesizing diverse cultural, musical and conceptual frameworks, her treatment of the space of the sonority, temporality, texture, and syntax have engaged musicians of different practices, critics, researchers, and worldwide listeners.

#39 Rian Noir Noir for harp trio

Yuan-Chen Li

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