“A composer who immigrated to the United States as a teenager in the aftermath of social unrest in China has won the University of Louisville’s 2020 Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition for A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, a work for orchestra premiered in 2018,” writes Daniel Gilliam on Monday (12/2) at radio station WFPL (Louisville, KY). “Lei Liang, 47, … is currently a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego; he’s also a research-artist-in-residence at Qualcomm Institute, an interdisciplinary research institute where Liang works with scientists to develop a ‘sonification’ of coral reefs. A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams is inspired by the landscapes of 20th century Chinese landscape artist Huang Binhong, but reaches deeper to explore ecological and spiritual destruction and our relationship with nature.… Liang’s next project, [a string quartet] already underway, is another collaboration with scientists who are studying the arctic…. A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams was premiered and recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and conducted by Gil Rose on the BMOP Sound label. The annual $100,000 Grawemeyer prize rewards outstanding ideas in music, and also world order, psychology, education and religion.”
Posted December 3, 2019
Photo of Lei Liang by Alex Matthews
