A Composer, a Camera, and a Childhood: My Childhood Memories Comes to Film

This August, Nova Linea Musica turns the camera on one of the most celebrated living composers in the world. On August 7, our production team joins composer Chen Yi and Founding Artist-in-Residence Rabia Brooke for a full day of filming: a workshop, an intimate sit-down interview, and a performance of a work written for this moment. Chen Yi flies into Chicago to be in the room, at the stand, and in front of the lens, and we could not be more thrilled to bring you along for what comes next.

THE COMMISSION

My Childhood Memories is a new suite for solo violin, composed in 2025 and commissioned by Nova Linea Musica for Rabia Brooke. It is a portrait of a childhood rendered in sound, and it is unmistakably personal.

The suite unfolds in three movements, each drawn from a game Chen Yi played as a child in China:

1 Flying a Kite

2 Throwing Sand Firecrackers

3 Playing Sticking Plasters

In Chen Yi’s own words, these games left such a deep impression of love and memory that she wanted to capture their scenes and their joy in the solo violin. The kite rises high and calm, a symbol of freedom and of the connection between the earthly and the divine, voiced in crystalline melodies in the violin’s highest register. The sand firecrackers of the lunar new year burst to life in forceful chords. And the chasing game Sticking Plasters races by in intensive running passages, children weaving through a double circle. Woven through all three is the memory of playing these games with her younger brother, a joy she has said she wanted to hold onto eternally through her music.

WHY WE ARE FILMING IT

Music like this deserves more than a program note. In partnership with the acclaimed production team Bitter Jester Studios, we are creating a short documentary that follows the piece from the page to the stage: Chen Yi’s background, the composition itself, the workshop process, and the creative journey shared between composer and performer.

On the evening of the premiere, the film opens the night as an intimate introduction to how the piece came to be. Then the music steps into the light for its live world premiere on the same stage, moments later. By the time the audience hears My Childhood Memories performed, they have already been inside its world. It is a cohesive artistic expression in a multimedia format, and the film will live on well past the night itself.

THE ARTISTS

Chen Yi is a globally celebrated Chinese American composer whose music unites Chinese and Western traditions. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has been commissioned by artists performed from Yo-Yo Ma to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her voice is one of the defining voices of contemporary music, and My Childhood Memories offers a rare and tender window into where that voice began.

Rabia Brooke, Nova Linea Musica’s Founding Artist-in-Residence, brings the suite to life. To watch a violinist shape a work written expressly for her, in dialogue with the composer who wrote it, is exactly the kind of encounter Nova Linea Musica exists to create.

WHAT COMES NEXT

August 7 is where the story begins, and the premiere arrives next spring. On March 31, 2027, the “Inheritance” concert at The CheckOut brings both halves of the story together in a single evening: the documentary opens the night as an intimate introduction to the workshop, the interview, and the making of the piece, and then Rabia Brooke performs My Childhood Memories live, in person, for the very first time.

Between now and then, we will be sharing glimpses from the shoot, the workshop, and the making of the film, along with details on the evening itself. Follow along, and be among the first to step inside a childhood remembered in sound.

Stay tuned.

Nova Linea Musica resources the creation of new music and closes the distance between composers, performers, and listeners. Every concert features a world premiere commissioned by Nova Linea Musica.

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