Creative Crossroads: Tan Dun

Composer and self-described “musical anthropologist” Tan Dun (perhaps best familiar for his Oscar-winning score to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) creates works that bridge time, place and culture through the fusion of ancient and avant-garde sounds

Celebrating the vocal, instrumental, and environmental sounds of the remote Chinese countryside, Tan explores the minority cultures of Hunan Province, where he was born, and brings it into play with modern instruments and orchestrations.

Expanding on the video and audio field recordings gathered for his multimedia concerto The Map, a Concerto for Cello, Video, and Orchestra, Tan and scholar Joanna Lee discuss the vanishing musical cultures of ethnic minorities in western Hunan and reflect on the creative challenges of preserving cultural legacies while creating new music fusing traditional, indigenous and contemporary sounds.