Abstract / About the project

This is the first scholarly effort to conceptualize Sino-Western cultural relations through the new international subgenre of “fusion concertos” for Chinese solo instrument and Western orchestra. Based on over a decade of research documenting 500 works, the author argues how instrumental tone colors that were once regarded as “timbral outsiders” in the Western orchestral tradition have gained “insider’s” acceptance within the repertory of fusion concertos. Through a novel metaphorical debate linking timbre to cultural identity, the chapter reveals how sonic transformations both underscore and undermine previously accepted musical boundaries, signaling an important step toward a new Chinese-Western cultural balance.

This article is published as a book chapter in: China and the West: Representation, Reception, and Reception, edited by Hon-Lun Yang and Michael Saffle, University of Michigan Press. (March 2017), pp. 186-204