Blossom song: Once upon a melody in Ancient Peking(2025)

As someone born in China, my generation no longer grows up in an environment where Peking Opera is part of daily life. Instead, it has become something we look at as cultural heritage. Many of its famous excerpts are now rearranged or recomposed into other musical genres rather than performed as complete operas.
The Blossom Song is inspired by the Peking Opera Mai Shui (《卖⽔》, Selling Water), which tells the story of Li Yangui, the son of a loyal minister in the Song Dynasty who loses everything after being framed by corrupt officials. His fiancée, Huang Guiying, stays faithful and secretly meets him while he sells water, expressing her love in the aria “ Reporting the Flower Names.”
In this piece, I use fragments of the original melody and reinterpret them through a contemporary musical language. Traditional Chinese instrumental gestures are translated into the piano and violin. The soprano’s expressive role from the opera is given to the violin, while the piano acts both as accompaniment and as a complementary voice—forming a dialogue between tradition and the present.