Unsuk Chin's Rocaná Premieres in Montreal, New York, and Chicago
(February 2008)
Unsuk Chin's new work for orchestra, Rocaná (Roh-CHA-nah), receives its world premiere performances March 3-4 with l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal under the baton of Kent Nagano at Salle Wilfried Pelletier in Montréal, before traveling to New York on March 8 for its U.S. premiere at Carnegie Hall. The following month, Kent Nagano will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Rocaná's Chicago premiere performances on April 24, 25, 26, 29 at Symphony Center.Jointly commissioned by l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Bayerische Staatsoper, Beijing Music Festival Arts Foundation, and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Rocaná is a 20-minute uninterrupted work for standard orchestra. The Sanskrit title means "room of light," a reference to Chin's exploration of the relationship between light and sound waves.
Says Ms. Chin: "In Rocaná I was concerned with the behavior of beams of light – their distortion, refraction, reflections, and undulations... The overall picture and the overall structure are one entity, one 'tonal sculpture.' However, one can look at it from various angles, since the inner structures are constantly changing. Even if the music at times gives the impression of stasis, subtle impulses, interactions, and reactions are continually present."
Unsuk Chin has been lauded for her "formidable ear for sonority and for mining the expressive potential of the slightest nuances of pitch and pulse" (The Guardian, UK). A student of György Ligeti, Chin writes music which is modern in language, but lyrical and non-doctrinaire in communicative power. Her first opera, Alice in Wonderland (2007), commissioned by the Los Angeles Opera, premiered with the Bayerische Staatsoper under Kent Nagano at the Munich Opera Festival last June. It was ranked on the Los Angeles Times "Best of 2007" list and was named "World Premiere of the Year" by European critics for Opernwelt magazine. In 2004 Chin received the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for her virtuosic Violin Concerto (2001), which has been performed in more than ten countries throughout Europe, Asia and North America, and has been proclaimed "the first truly great work of this millennium" by the Los Angeles Weekly.
Future projects comprise a Cello Concerto commissioned by the BBC for soloist Alban Gerhardt, a Concerto for Sheng and Orchestra commissioned by the Suntory Hall Tokyo, and new works for the Ensemble Modern and the Ensemble InterContemporain. Chin's music can be heard on a Deutsche Grammophon disc containing Akrostichon-Wortspiel, Fantaisie mécanique, Xi and Double Concerto, performed by the Ensemble InterContemporain.
> Further information on Work: Rocaná
Photo: Eric Richmond
> News Search
Mailing List
Sign up for news updates and offers via email
SIGN UPFeatured Publication
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition
Mussorgsky's famous work in Ravel's technicolour orchestration is included in the Masterworks Library of full scores, ideal for conductors, students and music lovers.
READ MORECompetitions
