The wait is over. Nova Linea Musica has released the trailer for In the Composer's Room, its first documentary film series, and you can watch it right here.
In about a minute, the trailer opens the door on Chen Yi: My Childhood Memories, the first episode of the series. Composer Chen Yi and violinist Rabia Brooke sit down with a new work for solo violin, share the childhood stories behind it, and bring the score to life in the Sanctuary of Winnetka Congregational Church.
A premiere lasts one night. In the Composer's Room gives the works Nova Linea Musica commissions a life well beyond it. Each episode brings together a conversation between composer and performer, the workshop where the score takes shape, and the performance that follows, so audiences can see how a new piece is made and hear why it matters.
In the workshop, composer and violinist refine the music bar by bar. At one point, Chen Yi sings a melody as it would sound on the erhu, the Chinese two-string fiddle, and Rabia answers it on the violin.
“I was amazed that she really read my mind and spoke in my musical language in the
violin solo work, My Childhood Memories.”
Chen Yi
My Childhood Memories was commissioned by Nova Linea Musica for violinist Rabia Brooke. The nine-minute suite has three movements, each drawn from a game Chen Yi played with her younger brother as a child in China: “Flying a Kite,” “Throwing Sand Firecrackers,” and “Playing Sticking Plasters.” The 15-minute film follows her story further, to the Cultural Revolution, when she was sent to the countryside and kept playing her violin, with rare photographs from her family archive. The film was produced by Nova Linea Musica with Bitter Jester Studios.
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Chen Yi is one of the most celebrated composers of her generation. Born in Guangzhou in 1953, she became in 1986 the first woman to earn a master's degree in composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City Conservatory, and her music brings together Chinese and Western traditions.
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Trailer and film by Bitter Jester Studios
NOVA LINEA MUSICA | novalineamusica.org
