PERFORMERS
- Jonathan Cohen, clarinet
- Josefina Urraca, piano
- Julia Yang, cello
- Mari Lee, violin
ABOUT THE CONCERT
Mandalas in the Rubble is a chamber work by the Chinese-born, US-based composer Dai Wei, written after a journey through Nepal and Tibet. She was struck by how the 2015 earthquake reduced many of the Kathmandu Valley's historic temples to debris, yet left their concentric, mandala-shaped bases intact. The piece imagines a woman's mourning ritual after the loss of her husband: strings are partly detuned to lend a "ramshackle and dark" color, and a free-flowing, sporadic texture gradually gathers into a peaceful, non-violent wholeness - an image of shattered things reshaping themselves into strength and beauty. Dai Wei, also an experimental Khoomei throat singer, writes music that moves between East and West, acoustic and electronic.