Intercultural composition is no longer a novelty. It has become a familiar, even commonplace, phenomenon. With this recording, Shih-Hui Chen (b. 1962) breathes fresh air into this important genre. In more ways than one, her transcultural work has blurred the lines between individual cultures and represents our rich musical horizon today.

Her earlier work is characterized by intense modernist sonorities, polyphonic layers, yearning angular melodies, and firm control of orchestral timbre and structure. It is the profound balance between her earlier modernist sensibility, with its rigorous control of polyphonic layers and structural design on the one hand, and her search for the inner self with materials distinctly different from Western tradition, that marks her accomplishment as a 21st-century composer. In the five works collected here, Chen broadens her reach into several branches of vernacular music – Nanguan music and Taiwanese opera – and the Chinese zither of traditional literati.