Eastern Expressions

Over the summer of 2006 ACM will collaborate with internationally recognized Beijing composer Xiaogang Ye, who will compose a brand new piece of music for us in four installments beginning in May and ending in August.

ACM ensemble members met at the Chicago Cultural Center in Preston Bradley Hall to record the music as he sent it and the recordings were posted with composer comments to the ACM website.

The object was to demystify the compositional process and allow an online audience to hear a new piece of music from its first idea, through rewrites, to the final conception.

The project culminated in a final concert on September 10th 2006 at the Chicago Cultural Center, and featured the World Premiere of Datura, the commissioned piece by Xiaogang Ye, and the music of other internationally recognized living Chinese composers like Chen Yi, Zhou Long and Huang Ruo.

With its unique Internet based approach and audience friendly demystification of the compositional process, Eastern Expressions is still revolutionizing the way ensembles collaborate with composers and the way audiences experience new music.

Click on a link above to hear the installments, read bios of the participants, read composer comments or the blog by ACM Executive Director Seth Boustead.

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