BAMBOO GROVE Single From Patrick Yim to Arrive Ahead of PENTATONE Album
The album pairs world premiere works by Chen Yi and Zhou Long, recorded during a residency at Notre Dame.
Violinist and violist Patrick Yim has released the first single from his upcoming album BAMBOO GROVE, arriving on PENTATONE. The track, Chen Yi's Suite for Viola and Chamber Winds: IV. Flower Drums in Dance, precedes the full album, which brings together world premiere recordings created in collaboration with composers Chen Yi and Zhou Long. The project explores the intersection of Chinese and Western musical traditions across four works recorded during a residency at the University of Notre Dame.
Recorded during a week-long residency at the University of Notre Dame in April 2024, Bamboo Grove brings together four works that reimagine the expressive possibilities of Western string instruments through the sonic worlds of Chinese musical culture. The project is enriched by Yim's close collaboration with the composers and by their personal histories which span the Cultural Revolution, formative studies at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and artistic refinement in New York at Columbia University with mentors Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky. Across the album, Yim performs on both violin and viola in works that evoke the guqin, erhu, pipa, xiao, lusheng, ancient bell ensembles, Peking opera percussion, and regional folk traditions, creating a sound world at once ancient and contemporary.
'I have long admired the work and personal histories of Chen Yi and Zhou Long, and it has been a profound privilege to collaborate with them on this recording and to come to know them personally,' said Patrick Yim. 'Their stories of collaborations with artists such as Yehudi Menuhin and Yo-Yo Ma offered a living connection to a remarkable musical lineage. From a performer's perspective, these works are both idiomatic and imaginative, pushing the limits of Western instruments through a deep familiarity with their traditions and a rich creative vision. It is an honor to bring this music to life and share it with a wider audience.'
The album opens with Zhou Long's Bamboo Grove for unaccompanied violin, a 2024 work commissioned for Yim by the University of Notre Dame and premiered at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. It was inspired by Ruan Xian, one of the famed Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, a performer and composer who embodied a spirit of artistic freedom. He is the only member of the Seven Sages to have had an instrument named after him: the ruan, a Chinese lute. Zhou's work unfolds in two contrasting sections, evoking both the contemplative image of a sage among bamboo and the lively energy of Henan folk music. Throughout, the violin is transformed through extensive pizzicato, quick glissandi, percussive articulations, and coloristic effects that suggest the zheng, guqin, ruan, and erhu.
Chen Yi's Xian Shi, heard here in its trio version for viola, percussion, and piano, is rooted in folk ensemble music from Chaozhou in Guangdong, her mother's hometown. The work, later expanded into a full orchestral version, was Chen's earliest orchestral composition and the first viola concerto by a Chinese composer. Its sound world reimagines the viola as a vehicle for Chinese instrumental sonorities, including the nasal, singing tone of the yehu and the rolling plucked textures of the pipa and ruan. The cadenza features a striking four-finger rapid pizzicato roll, an unprecedented technique in the viola repertoire.
Zhou Long's Tales from the Nine Bells for clarinet, violin, viola, and piano draws on a millennia-old Chinese legend recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, in which 'Nine Bells ring with Knowledge of the Frost.' The work conjures an otherworldly landscape through stopped-string piano sonorities, shimmering glissandi, glassy string harmonics, guqin-like pizzicato, erhu-inspired violin writing, and rhythmic figures derived from Peking opera percussion.
Patrick Yim performs on both violin and viola throughout BAMBOO GROVE, drawing on sonic traditions including the guqin, erhu, pipa, xiao, and lusheng alongside ancient bell ensembles and Peking opera percussion. The composers' histories, spanning the Cultural Revolution and training at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and Columbia University, inform the recording's approach to bridging musical traditions.
Photo Credit: DeBartolo Performing Arts Center
Photo Credit: DeBartolo Performing Arts Center