Dialogue - East Meets West

"Dialogue -- East meets West" is a collection of projects where we are working with Chinese music and musicians. It is very important for us, when coming to an old culture with a very strong classical tradition like the Chinese, that we are constantly in a dialogue with the culture, the music, the musicians and the audience. Artists living in today's world must adapt and build bridges between cultures. This has always been important, but today even more that ever. By trying to learn from other cultures, you can enrich your own, and as the world gets smaller with every passing day, it is much too dangerous to leave the globalisation to politicians and corporations! The world needs the openness and creativity that is at the heart of the artistic process. The first project was the cd "Spirits - East meets West" with Lars Hannibal and Chinese Xiao player Chen Yue, playing music from China and Europe. This also led to the formation of a Quartet (Michala Petri, Lars Hannibal, Chen Yue, with Pipa player Yan Jiang), and the creation of a very unique and exciting project where 5 young Chinese and 5 young Danish composers have composed 10 new duets for Xiao and recorder. Those duets will be recorded in 2008. This a powerful dialogue, in the truest sense of the word; East and West, meeting, exchanging ideas, collaborating, creating... The renowned Chinese composer Chen Yi has composed a new recorder concerto for Michala Petri, The Ancient Chinese Beauty, which will be world premiered in Beijing on April the 4th 2008. We continue to work with other composers on projects that all have the elements of a musical dialogue.