Invisible Portals

INVISIBLE PORTALS is commissioned by American Composers Orchestra, with the support of Elizabeth and Justus

Schlichting. It premiered on March 25, 2022 at the Carnegie Hall, by American Composers Orchestra, Marin Alsop conducting.

Dai Wei is originally from China. Her musical journey navigates the spaces between East and West, classical and pop, electronic and acoustic, innovation and tradition. She often draws from Eastern philosophy and aesthetics to create works with contemporary resonance, and reflect an introspection on how these multidimensional conflicts and tension can create and inhabit worlds of their own. Being an experimental vocalist, she performs as a khoomei throat singer in her recent compositions. She was recently awarded a CANOA Commission (Composing a New Orchestra Audience) from the American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Reading. Her solo violin and electronic composition Song for Shades of Crimson was premiered by violinist Todd Reynolds at the 2020 Bang on a Can Marathon. She served as young artist composer-in-residence at Music from Angel Fire and composer fellow at Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong. Wei is currently pursuing her doctorate in music composition at Princeton University as a Naumburg Fellow. She holds an artist diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music. After she finished her bachelor’s in music composition at China’s Xinghai Conservatory of Music, she came to the US and earned her master’s in music composition at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

When I was in Tibet, I was told that there was a legendary realm of peace and prosperity governed by wisdom and passion. This place is called Shambhala. It is said that at the bottom of Potala Palace, there is a secret tunnel to the Shambhala. This immediately reminds me of the mandala thangka, where geometric patterns are constructed on a series of concentric squares or circles with numerous entrances. In Invisible Portals, my hope is that it opens up adventurous portals to a place that does not come only from the West or the East, a place where multicultural and multidimensional conversations interweave beyond time and space. Ultimately it takes me to the Shambhala I carry inside.

—Dai Wei