Guoping Jia - Fallen Leaves in Deep Valley (2011) United States premiere

Azusa Pacific University Symphony Orchestra Christopher Russell, conductor Recorded April 21, 2023 at the Haugh Performing Arts Center, Glendora, CA JIA Guoping is a professor of composition and academic supervisor of doctoral students at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. He is also the director of Institute of Musicology in Central Conservatory of Music/Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities of China. He was born in 1963 in Shanxi Province of China. In 1994, he received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst), which enabled him to study composition first with Prof. Rolf Hempel then with Prof. Helmut Lachenmann at the State University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, Germany. After graduation from Stuttgart at the Künstliches Aufbaustudium in July 1998, he returned to China and kept on teaching again as an assistant professor, then earned a Doctorate in Composition under the direction of Prof. Wu Zuqiang in 2006 at the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing. Jia’s composition pieces involve various genres such as chamber music, orchestral music, ballet music. etc. . Most of his scores have been published by the German international music publishing company “Sikorski”. His pieces were performed by many world-famous music ensembles and orchestras, such as the Arditti Quartet, the Toronto New Music Ensemble, the E-Mex Ensemble, the Deutsche Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mannheim National Opera Orchestra, the China National Symphony Orchestra, the Mexico OFUNAM Orchestra, the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra and more. The title Fallen Leaves into Deep Valley came from Bei Dao’s poem “Away” Let’s go/as falling leaves drifted into deep valley/the songs still finds no home/Let’s go/ as silver moonlight shines on ice/it has overflown the river bank/Let’s go/we gaze at the same sky/ our hearts beating the drum of dusk…” The work is a work in memorial of children who perished in the May 12th, 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The music is not an illustration of the poetic image, rather the resonance between composer and poet’s real-life experience. The work is constructed in five consecutive musical paragraphs with symbolic sound effect from daily lives. Such as the sound of firecracker represents farewell to children passed away in the May 12th earthquake; the wind chimes ringtone at the end of the music is a metaphor of “beautiful flowers raising up paradise”. See more performances by the APU Symphony on YouTube: / apusymph. . Like the APU Symphony on Facebook   / apusymphony   To learn more about the Azusa Pacific University School of Music: http://www.apu.edu/music/