Muqam Euphoria (2023)

Live Recording from August2023, Maine.

Performed by Cassatt String Quartet

This piece is inspired by the traditional music of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, China, and captures the passion and joy that I experienced while listening to their music and watching them dance. This piece is my tribute to the beauty and richness of Uyghur culture.

Muqam Euphoria

Composer Yun LI’s work combines her years of research on traditional music within a highly expressionistic and inventive musical language. Elements from experimental music and earlier sources are woven together and transformed through her own personal experiences to create impactful listening spaces.

Yun’s works include pieces for various settings and instrumentations, with recent commissions from and performances by artistic groups such as Ensemble Con Tempo Beijing, Tianjin Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Academia China, Guangxi Symphony Orchestra, China National Traditional Orchestra, Cincinnati Soundbox, China-ASEAN Contemporary Ensemble, suona virtuoso Yazhi Guo, etc. LI was previously Composer-in-Residence of China-ASEAN Contemporary Ensemble, and  has been selected as an active participant in various workshops, including the Beijing Science Foundation Project “Research on Contemporary Chinese Opera” (2018), the Shanghai International Composition Workshop (2019), and the Seal Bay Music Festival in Maine (2023). She was an orchestral prizewinner of the 27th Autumn in Chengdu International Music Season (2021), and the prize winner in the instrumental music category of the Fourth Annual Gansu Yellow Bell Music Prize (2023). Several of her musical pieces, arrangements and academic essays have been published in core journals in the field, as well as included in college textbooks across China.

Yun LI graduated with her Bachelor of Music from the China Conservatory of Music in 2018, and was directly accepted to pursue her Master's degree on full scholarship there in the same year, continuing her studies with composer Gao Weijie. She is a current DMA candidate in composition at the University of Missouri Kansas City, where she is advised by Chen Yi and Zhou Long.

Muqam Euphoria

Yun Li