ISLANDS

Bringing together live music for Chinese and Western instruments with film, scent and movement, the performance drifts through musical imaginings of rivers, oceans, reflections and distant landscapes.

Contemporary works sit alongside music by Chopin, Palestrina and Debussy, drawing connections across centuries and traditions. From the spiritual longing of Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus to the shifting reflections of Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau and the landscapes evoked by contemporary East Asian composers, water becomes both subject and metaphor – flowing between places, cultures and histories while resisting fixed boundaries.

Created in collaboration with multimedia artist Chang Meng, ISLANDS takes inspiration from Chinese tea ceremonies to create a space where performance and ritual begin to blur. Through music, image, scent and movement, it asks how cultures and traditions separated by geography might find connections through our shared relationship with water.

Qin Wenchen The Shadow of the Sun 太阳的影子IV
Lou Shuhua Song of the Homebound Fisherman 渔舟唱晚
Claude Debussy/Chang Jing Reflets dans l’eau
Jing-Mu Kuo Disappearance 山语逝
Arthur Yuen Whispering Orchard in the Silent Valley 空谷幽兰
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Sicut cervus
Caroline Shaw In manus tuus
Kalevi Aho Ruija
Frédéric Chopin Prelude, Op. 28, No. 15 ‘Raindrop’

Part of our Lunar New Year Celebrations series.

Supported by Nottingham Confucius Institute.