Patrick Yim on Bamboo Grove

Born in Honolulu and educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Patrick Yim has already assembled quite a discography, focusing on three strands - Chinese composers, new commissions, and works for unaccompanied violin.

His latest album, Bamboo Grove on Pentatone, sees him double down on all three of these themes, with works by Chen Yi and Zhou Long including the eponymous work for solo violin commissioned by Yim. The writing throughout evokes traditional Chinese string instruments (and indeed even wind instruments) and draws deeply on Chinese legends and heritage. 

Patrick explains more about the works on this album and how it all weaves together into an engaging whole.

Where did the idea first come from to devote an album to Chen Yi and Zhou Long?

The idea grew out of a longstanding admiration for their music. I had been performing Chen Yi’s music since 2018, and when I began thinking about an album devoted to their work, I wanted to explore both composers more deeply. As part of the project, I also commissioned a new solo piece from Zhou Long, which eventually became Bamboo Grove, his first work for unaccompanied violin. I’m drawn to their music because it is so imaginative and masterfully crafted, and I was excited by the opportunity to bring works that had not previously been recorded to a wider audience. 

Important figures in contemporary classical music, both in the United States and internationally, Chen and Zhou belong to the group of composers often referred to as the “New Wave” of Chinese composers, which emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s. They studied at the Central Conservatory of Music alongside classmates such as Tan Dun, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, and later continued their studies at Columbia University. They gained recognition as a generation of composers creating new musical idioms, sounds, and approaches that expanded the possibilities of contemporary music. Zhou went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2011. 

The project also connects closely to my own artistic practice of creating dialogue between different musical traditions and expanding the way we think about the classical repertoire. 

Both composers experienced the full force of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s – do you get any sense of that upheaval having affected or shaped their approach to composition?

During the Cultural Revolution, Chen Yi, a gifted violinist, was the concertmaster of the Guangzhou Peking Opera Troupe. Through that experience, she learned the techniques and expressive possibilities of traditional Chinese instruments through close, personal observation and collaboration. Zhou Long worked as an arranger, encountering a wide range of instruments and musical materials, both Chinese and Western. I think these experiences became an important part of their musical identities and laid the groundwork for their later work in which an intimate, practical knowledge of the sounds, techniques, and expressive language of traditional Chinese music was combined with a mastery of Western compositional techniques.

Both composers make use of techniques that see the violin and viola imitating the sounds of a wide range of Chinese string instruments, both plucked and bowed – why do you think they opted for that approach in these cases, rather than simply writing for those instruments (as they’ve both also done)?

I think it comes naturally to them. Their music is shaped by their lived experiences and they grew up immersed in Chinese musical traditions while also being trained in Western classical music. Chinese music and culture are, in a sense, their mother tongue.

Many of their commissions are for Western instruments, and they bring the sounds, gestures, and techniques of Chinese instruments into their compositions. Rather than simply imitating a Chinese instrument on the violin or viola, they create entirely new sounds and ways of playing by combining the possibilities of Western instruments with a rich vocabulary of Chinese sounds. 

Chen Yi’s suite offers a very unusual soundworld – quartets and quintets that set a wind instrument against strings are common, but here we have a string solo instrument with wind backing. It seems like this might be difficult to balance – what was it like working with this arrangement of forces?

Despite the relatively large chamber forces, I find that the Suite has an airy lightness, especially in the first three movements. The textures are crystalline, and Chen’s careful orchestration is sensitive to balance and instrumental timbre, allowing the solo viola to remain present within the larger ensemble. 

I loved playing this piece and I found the scoring exquisite. As I found myself playing duets with the glockenspiel or clarinet, or taking a line from the bassoon, I was stimulated by the new instrumental combinations to reimagine the viola timbre.

I didn’t realise this until recently, but Zhou and Chen are actually husband and wife! Do you know whether they collaborate on their compositions?

Yes, they do! Zhou Long and Chen Yi have collaborated on three major works: Symphony “Humen 1839” (2009), the piano concerto Brilliant Prospect (2022), and Transplanted Seeds for orchestra (2023).

Symphony “Humen 1839,” which was nominated for a Grammy, commemorates the destruction of opium at Humen, Guangdong, in 1839, an event that contributed to the outbreak of the First Opium War. Brilliant Prospect is a piano concerto written to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, and it was premiered by pianist Haochen Zhang. (Zhou, Chen, and Zhang were all distinguished visiting professors at the Southern University of Science and Technology.) For Brilliant Prospect, Chen told me that she wrote the first movement using material from a Shenzhen folk song, while Zhou wrote the second movement. 

Transplanted Seeds was commissioned by the National Repertory Orchestra and premiered in 2023, with a subsequent performance by the Kansas City Symphony conducted by Michael Stern in January 2024. The collaboration grew in part out of their earlier individual work. Chen used the Cantonese folksong Moonlight Shines (月光光) at the beginning of the piece, quoting an orchestration of the song Zhou used in his cantata. The title Transplanted Seeds refers to their experience of leaving China and putting down roots in the United States. In their program note, they describe themselves as “little seeds from China,” growing on American soil and being nurtured by the multicultural society around them. 

They also collaborate as beneficent critics of each others work, sharing their work with each other and giving one another direct feedback. Though they write in their own distinctive voices, they understand and appreciate each other’s craft.

For a listener unfamiliar with these two composers’ work – in brief, what should they listen out for when approaching this album?

I would encourage listeners to notice how vividly Zhou Long and Chen Yi expand the sound worlds of the violin and viola. In these pieces, the instruments suggest the colors, gestures, and expressive qualities of traditional Chinese instruments—the guqin, erhu, pipa, xiao, and others—through inventive uses of pizzicato, harmonics, glissandi, and double stops. As the composers synthesize different musical traditions, they stretch our understanding of the sonic possibilities of the violin and viola.

There is also an extraordinary range of character across the album. Zhou’s music often has a sense of subtlety, atmosphere, and finely shaded color, while Chen’s can be more dramatic, passionate, and rhythmically charged. Both composers possess an extraordinary ear for instrumental color and mastery of orchestration. The sounds can be delicate and almost ghostly one moment, then percussive, energetic, and explosive the next. There are so many fascinating and beautiful new sounds to discover in this album.