Premiere concert: December 7th, 2013, as my Master Thesis at Bandeis University. The premiere is founded by the New Music Brandeis. The opera received The American Prize 2015 in Professional Category.
Conductor - Jeffrey Means, Soprano - Aliana de la Guardia, Violin I - Lilit Hartunian, Violin II - Annie Hsu, Viola - Justin Ouellet, Cello - Kett Lee, Piano - Elaine Rombola Aveni, Percussion - Nick Tolle, Organ/Celesta - Alexander Lane, 
Electronic Assistant - James Praznik, Stage lighting - Richard Chowenhill, Concert Manager - Jared Redmond
Composer, Playwright, Stage/Light settings/Performing design - Yiguo Yan

Act One
A female writer lives in an imaginary country without free speech. Language is distorted by the governing dictatorship and centralized religious authorities. (This distortion is represented symbolically first by a musical collage—a recording of political speeches in seven languages, including words of a trial after Chinese culture revolution, a Stalin speech, a Hitler speech, a Mussolini speech, a FDR speech, a Taliban recording, and a young Japanese Nazi speech, and second by a religious organ music) In this depressed and restrictive environment, people shout meaningless and ridiculous slogans. Meanwhile, the writer suffers painfully because her waking consciousness stands out among the fury of the world. After a long period of depression, the writer gradually becomes an aphasic. She cannot control her words whether it is in writing or speaking. Her language disorder causes her to act crazily. On one hand, she keeps repeating "pink" (the symbol for vulgar in the libretto) obsessively; on the other hand, her sober consciousness stimulates her nausea towards society. An important sentence of the first act is "people are dolls that are manipulated by society, morality, government, religions, nationalism, class contradictions, boundaries, majorities, norm!" At the end of Act One, the writer completely loses herself in the mental disease, isolating her from the world. 

Act Two
In Art Two, "Colors of Obsessions" expands to other colors, as the writer starts her inner-self journey. Each color symbolizes an extremely painful life experience: black for dictatorship; white for nihilism; red for violence; green for claustrophobia, yellow for fury, and blue for sorrow. Colors are the all-pervasive pain, which fills the writer's soul. The seven colors' journey also symbolizes a path going towards the highest level of wisdom, the "purple heaven". Although the writer commits suicide at the end of the opera, her soul flies to the purple paradise; she achieves the wisdom that cannot be found during her lifetime. 

Notes of Composer/ Playwright:
"Colors of Obsessions" is dedicated to thirteen suicidal writers, symbolically represented in the libretto by the "thirteen dead angels" who appear in the female writer's dreams: Sarah Kane, Haizi, Ernest Hemingway, Akutagawa Kyunesuke, Sylvia Plath, Stenfan Zweig, Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton, Sergei Yesenin, Henri Maupassant, Yasunari Kawabata, Sappho, and Sara Teasdale. I grew up reading their profound literature works. They dedicated their lives to art that is everlasting. While I continue to be inspired by their works, I feel their suicidal deaths are like a nightmarish transmigration. Their works and deaths leave me a speechless intensity that has to be expressed through music. The suicide of writers to me is a very serious cultural and spiritual phenomenon with complicated reasons including: an excessive dedication to art; the conflict between imaginative worlds and reality; the sensitivity of seeing through the weaknesses of human nature; and the over-exposure of personal emotions, causing nervous breakdowns. I want to explore this phenomenon further through the depiction of a writer's inner-self journey from creative life to death.

Colors Of Obsessions--Yiguo Yan, composer and playwright, Premiered in Boston, 2013

Divergent Trajectories presents a struggle between two opposing manifestations of individualism. The first section of the work takes the form of a process fugue—a kind of operation-based musical texture in which each voice works independently to execute a prescribed series of tasks that, in the case of this work, ultimately transform the means by which pitch material is generated. In this system, individualism is based on the autonomy with which each member goes about discharging their assigned duties. It gradually becomes apparent, however, that this form of individualism is based on a fundamental flaw, as the freedom with which each member can express their individuality is eclipsed by the rigidity that the texture demands.

The latter section of the work presents an alternative approach, one that is marked by struggle, but ultimately arrives at collective triumph. Here, each instrument’s individual freedom is intrinsically connected to the expressive freedom of the ensemble as a whole. As the collective creative power of the ensemble grows, so too does the freedom of each instrument to express their individuality by staking their own unique path through the music. The result is a transcendent collectivism that, instead of suppressing individual freedom, sublates it.

Recorded at the 73rd Composers Conference at Wellesley College in July, 2017 by the Conference Ensemble (James Baker, director). Performers are Barry Crawford (flute), Benjamin Fingland (clarinets), Gabriela Diaz (violin), Joshua Gordon (cello), Steven Beck (piano), and James Baker (conductor).

Divergent Trajectories

Broken Face 碎脸 - Soprano/Ensemble/Electronic

Written for and performed by the JACK Quartet (January 2018).

Christopher Otto, Violin
Austin Wulliman, Violin
John Pickford Richards, Viola
Jay Campbell, Violoncello

During the Spring of 2017, I traveled to nature preserves throughout Northern California, hiking through valleys, mountains, forests, beaches, ridges, streams, ponds, and lakes in search of magical moments in the wild when the complex sounds of the earth fall into sync and become music. Among these locations are El Corte de Madera Creek, Thornewood, Big Basin, Windy Hill, Pescadero Marsh, Bedwell Bayfront, Skyline Ridge, Loch Lomond, and Yosemite National Park.

Songbird features original natural soundscape recordings from Windy Hill, alongside the birdsong of a variety of species, including the Redwinged Blackbird, California Quail, American Coot, American Crow, Steller’s Jay, Pileated Woodpecker, Nutall’s Woodpecker, Marsh Wren, Pacific Wren, a rafter of Wild Turkeys, and three subspecies of Song Sparrow.

On the Lost Trail at first light, you can hear the magnificent dawn chorus of countless birds as they swirl about in a shroud of thick, pale mist, howling wind, and drizzling rain. Not long after, at the great precipice of Hamms Gulch, an airplane soars across the Eastern horizon, passing through the rising sun as the forest awakens in golden light to a symphony of birdsong...

Dedicated to my dear friends Brian Cook, Christopher Rispoli, Jeremy Wexler, and Justin Nickell

"Songbird" for String Quartet (2018) | JACK Quartet

This piece of music was inspired by a poem called “A Song in the Cave”, written by a Chinese female poet Shuying Cao, at her age of 19.
The poet told me that she was born in the north of China, so to herself, the cave of snow in this poem means a hometown, a shelter, and a place of departure. But the young girl in this poem seems to suffer a lot and be hurt a lot. So as a feminist, I abstract the meaning in this poem and want to express the complex emotions between a father and a daughter and the complex relationships between a patriarchal society and a young feminist. Briefly speaking, I just want to express how a young feminist struggles to rise from the patriarchal swamp after deep confusion and pain. So I’d like to create many gestures ascending from the low range up to high range, on the heel of which immediately falls down, or be beaten down, but finally succeeding in the high range like spray shining under the sun. And too many gestures in the low range symbolize the depression she suffers.
And I’d like to use the envelopes of attacks and feedbacks, or the distortion of the envelope (i.e. the reverse, the recombination of the envelopes, etc.) as my main materials and gestures.
Le trou de neige was firstly composed for an ensemble of ten players, while this version is for orchestra. It was premiered by Israel Contemporary Players, conducted by Zsolt Nagy in September 2016. 



A Song in the Cave
 
By Shuying Cao

The cave of snow
The cave of snow at the bottom of the sea 
    My cave of snow 
Endlessly entangling seaweeds and souls with cyanosis 
But it was granted by my father 
My cave of snow 

At the bright and aching bottom of the sea 
The feminine cave of snow, that cicatrizes everything, 
Is only suitable for the young girl to live in.
All the things that can move me
Are there.
A soft sun, branches, and
Carved purple female birds scattering on the ground
How I eager being together with these things right here
For a life-long time

The young girl, who thoroughly understands the tragedy and cannot find the nature of life,
The young girl, who is blue or violet,
Practicing to mend herself in the snow of cave,
And from tomorrow, starting to expect 
A shining sun 

The cave of snow in my father’s friction ridge, and
The girl who has exhausted his last solemnity
Are blazing shining,
Over the sea for thousands of years.

Le Trou De Neige II

This piece for large orchestra was inspired by a poem, "Lamp Lighting", written by Mr. Chen Dongdong, one of the most influential poet in contemporary China.
Lamps shine in the dark night, so I use descending fragments with darker and darker harmonies and gradual changing timbres to portray the falling of the night, in between of which was inserted with materials of superposed perfect fifths, to depict the glittering colours of lamps, lighted “into a stone”, “into a river”, “raised high on a mountain”, and “fly up from the forest”. This piece begins from the dusk and ends with the dawn. It expresses that only love and faith just like our lamps, support us to go forward, in the dark night of our personal life.
This piece was dedicated to those who have granted us love and beauty of life. It was premiered by Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zhang Liang, in November 2016.


Lamp Lighting

by Chen dongdong

Shine the lamp into a stone, make them see
the shape of the sea in it, make them see
ancient fish in it
you ought to make them see the light too，a lamp
raised high on a mountain 

The lamp should also shine into a river, make them see
living fish, make them see a soundless sea
you ought to make them see the sunset too
a firebird fly up from the forest

Light the lamp. When I use my hand to block the north wind
when I stand in a narrow gorge
I think they will crowd around me
they will come to stare at my words like lamps

(1985)

[Translation by Joseph Donahue, Chen Dongbiao with Zhang Er]

Lamps, and Slices of the Night

Portrait: Flowing Water, for large orchestra (world premiere)
When writing this piece, I was inspired by WOMAN, the most famous series of poems by Zhai Yongming, the well-known poet and feminist in contemporary China. This piece is dedicated to her.
Since ancient times, women have been compared as water in traditional culture of China. Woman in love, is tender as water, hoping to be treated equally as a real friend. But in the poems, WOMAN, by Zhai Yongming, this woman in love suffers such a lot that “vomit out her heart”.
An ancient music for qin, FLOWING WATER, was to express the preciousness of friendship. So, I mainly use as the central pitches in this piece, the inversion, retrograde and all kinds of expansions and compressions of a series of pitches, A C D F G A, which origin from Chinese ancient music for qin, FLOWING WATER, to ironically show that this woman cannot be respected equally as a friend by her lover. And meanwhile the textures which sound like flowing water, indicate the image of the woman changing from the limpid streams into deep and gloomy ocean, and finally, into the furious and beastly flood.
This is the portrait of women in my heart, sometimes tender, and sometimes violent, full of passion and longings inside, just like the flowing water.

This piece was premiered by Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zhang Liang, in November 2018.

Portrait: Flowing Water

Yu-Fang Chen, violin
Mei-Chun Chen, viola
Performed at Ball State University; Indiana; February 2019
Program Note:  
Hive Mind, as applied to humans, is a relatively new term, defined as the collective thoughts, ideas, and opinions of a group of people regarded as functioning together as a single mind. Sure sounds like chamber music performance to me…

Hive Mind for Violin and Viola Duo

Yiqing Zhu - The Hither And Farther

Yiguo Yan is a winner of The American Prize in professional Category, a native Chinese composer studying and working in US. Her music has been played in China, America, Italy, France and Austria, with conductors Mahir Cetiz, Jeffery Means, Noah Sivan and Zsolt Nagy. Yan’s other winning awards including "Shanghai New Music Week 2016 international call for score", The First Prize of “Nancy Van de Vate International Composition Prize for Opera” (Austria), The First Prize of “Marion Tournon-Branly” outdoor performing art music directing (France), the First Prize of Shanghai chamber music composition competition (China), Her two chamber music composition for Chinese traditional instruments have been awarded by Shanghai Spring International Music Festival and Shanghai Conservatory “Xiang-Yin” composition competition for Chinese instruments. Yan has been awarded scholarship from Mannes College of Music, Brandeis University and UMKC. Her received fellowships including Fontainebleau Festival, Cortona New Music Session, Thailand International Composition Festival, Shanghai New Music Week, and Brevard Music Center. Yiguo Yan has been interviewed by the New York City ICN television station, Kansas City Johnson County Library, The New Women Weekly Newspaper and China Music Weekly Newspaper. She has received commission from NYU Zen Arts Concert and Johnson County Library “Listen Local” Project. The public radio weekly show “Music of our Mothers” in Maryland, America has broadcasted Yan’s music. Yan is also a featured artist in “Music of our Mothers” radio show’s companion website and Johnson County Library.

Colors Of Obsessions--Yiguo Yan, composer and playwright, Premiered in Boston, 2013

Yiguo Yan

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