Yun Shui

雲⽔

For piano

2025

20 minutes

Commissioned by and dedicated to Thomas Feng. With generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Premiered by Thomas Feng in Church of Truth, Victoria, BC, Canada, April 25, 2026

In 雲⽔ Yun Shui, I imagine sound as brushwork, using the piano to paint a musical scroll that gradually unfolds in time. Inspired by the visual language of traditional East Asian landscape painting—shan shui (山水), meaning “mountain and water”—this piece draws upon the fluid interplay of gesture and texture. The piano traces lines like ink on paper: meandering strokes, shimmering points, and sudden bursts of color. As the music unfolds, the sonic landscape shifts and transforms, guiding the listener through an evolving world of mists, flowing waters, drifting clouds, and hidden currents. Yun Shui invites reflection and wonder—a journey that flows between the tangible and the imagined, where sound becomes a vessel for metaphor and transformation.

Waterscape I

For piano

2025

Created with generous support from the Ontario Arts Council

Recording: played by yours truly; produced by Joseph Glaser at the Canadian Music Centre, July 2025

In Waterscape I, I seek to create a musical journey inspired by the aesthetics of traditional East Asian landscape scrolls, or shanshui (山水)—literally “mountain and water.” The piano acts as a sonic brush, painting an impressionistic world of clouds, peaks, and flowing waters. Opening musical gestures act as ink marks—dots, lines, and washes—gradually shaping an aural landscape. As the piece unfolds like an unrolling scroll, listeners are carried through an evolving sonic terrain of shifting textures and motifs—from mountaintops and drifting clouds to streams, seas, and rising mist—mirroring the cyclical motion of nature.