In a rare performance of Tan Dun‘s Ghost Opera for string quartet and pipa with water, metal, stones, and paper, new music veterans of the Momenta Quartet recall the haunting magic of Chinese peasant shamans. Zhou Yi, one of America’s leading pipa virtuosi, contributes her immense talent to the performance.

The composer describes this work as a reflection on human spirituality, which is too often buried in the bombardment of urban culture and the rapid advances of technology. It is a cross-temporal, cross-cultural, and cross-media dialogue that touches on the past, present, future, and the eternal; employs elements from Chinese, Tibetan, English, and American cultures; and combines performance traditions of the European classical concert, Chinese shadow puppet theater, visual art installations, folk music, dramatic theater, and shamanistic ritual.

To open the show, intrepid composer, improviser, and guitarist Gyan Rileypairs with Bang on A Can All-Star percussionist David Cossin (also a long-time collaborator of Tan Dun) for a set of structured improvisations based on motives from Tan Dun’s rich score, highlighting and providing context for the great nuances present in the work.