Pipa artist Yang Jin to premiere multicultural-infused new works in New York

On October 3, 2026, New York's MusicON+ InterArts Festival will host a pipa-focused chamber music concert featuring the iconic Chinese plucked-string instrument with a history of over 2,000 years.

Acclaimed pipa performer Yang Jin will present the world premieres of four newly commissioned pieces crafted by distinguished international composers: Wang Lu, Felipe Lara, Yoon-Ji Lee and Anthony Vine, whose respective cultural roots span China, the United States, Brazil and South Korea. The program will also feature the US premiere of Song of the Pipa by the late revered Chinese composer and educator Xu Zhenmin (1934–2024).

Collectively, the five works explore a central artistic question: whether an instrument's ancient heritage should be faithfully preserved in its original form, or reimagined as living material for contemporary musical creation. Each composer offers a distinct interpretation, drawing inspiration from historical manuscripts, visual art, fading traditions and intimate personal memory.

The lineup of composers represents leading voices in global contemporary music, recipients of the field's most prestigious accolades. Wang Lu, tenured professor at Brown University, is a Guggenheim Fellow. Felipe Lara, chair of composition at the Johns Hopkins University Peabody Institute, was a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Yoon-Ji Lee, composition faculty at Berklee College of Music, is also a Guggenheim Fellow. New York-based composer Anthony Vine earned the 2024 Rome Prize in Musical Composition.

Wang Lu's piece Unsaid, Untold for pipa and piano draws creative inspiration from ancient Dunhuang pipa scores. Discovered among Dunhuang cave relics and traced back to the Tang Dynasty, these manuscripts represent some of the world's earliest surviving pipa notations. Their unique tablature has never been fully decoded, leaving inherent textual ambiguity that invites diverse artistic interpretation rather than yielding a single definitive reading.

Instead of attempting to reconstruct historically authentic sounds, Wang Lu embraces the manuscripts' unresolved uncertainty as creative potential. Melodic modes extracted from the fragmented ancient notations serve as foundational material for innovative contemporary expression. The pipa and piano engage in layered sonic dialogue, intertwining, resonating and mutually transforming one another's textures, rather than delivering a rigid, literal reproduction of ancient music.