Composer Angel Lam has spanned the globe to premiere her pieces, and her latest orchestral work will have its world premiere this coming weekend by the Quad City Symphony Orchestra.
In her fourth visit to the QC since January 2024, the 47-year-old New York City-based artist will be back to showcase Unearthing the Heart: The Thousand Grottoes of Dunhuang, commissioned by the League of American Orchestras with the generous support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. This evocative new work will feature dancers of the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, choreographed by world renowned artist Zhongmei Li, whose visionary movement of language brings depth, elegance, and cultural resonance to the stage, according to a QCSO release.
Together, Lam and Li reimagine the ancient cave murals of Dunhuang, China -- one of the Silk Road’s most significant artistic and spiritual crossroads through a fusion of orchestral color, dance, and visual storytelling. The choreography and dance for Angel Lam’s work is funded by The Chinese Heritage Foundation of the Minneapolis Foundation.
“‘Unearthing the Heart: The Thousand Grottoes of Dunhuang’ for orchestra and dance, is about discovering Dunhuang and its ancient mural paintings in a thousand caves,” the composer said recently. “Dunhuang is an oasis at the entrance to the Taklamakan Desert, the main crossroads of the ancient Silk Road, shaped by a Crescent Moon Spring and majestic Mingsha Shan, Singing Sand Dunes. It is not only an important trade hub, but also the site of many generations of monks, artists, and pilgrims, who created a treasure trove of paintings and sculptures, documenting a thousand years of life and spiritual pursuits on the Silk Road.
“In this piece, some of the paintings are recreated in sound, movement, and costume to interpret their joy, beauty, spirituality, and virtuosity, and, most of all, the awakening of compassion and the heart,” Lam said.
“Silk Road has been a lifelong passion of mine,” she added by email. “For many years, I worked with Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble, writing and exploring music of the Silk Road with non-Western instrumentalists, and was a part of Silk Road Ensemble's worldwide tours. The Silk Road musicians are friends that I kept in touch with over the years, and we still do new projects together (recently released an album featuring Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi player) with Hub New Music Ensemble, and a commission work featuring Wu Man the virtuosic pipa player, with Yale University Norfolk Chamber Music Festival).
“My feelings with this part of the world are deep, and I feel very in touch with Zhongmei (the choreographer) when she and I started working together,” she said.
“To be chosen as the lead orchestra in this League of American Orchestras commissioning consortium, and to present the world premiere of Angel Lam’s new work, is a profound honor,” said Brian Baxter, QCSO executive director. “Bringing this powerful piece to life in the Quad Cities speaks to the artistic ambition of our community. There are few works in the orchestral repertoire that rival ‘The Rite of Spring’—a score that fundamentally redefined what music could be and continues to challenge and electrify audiences more than a century later. Presenting it alongside Angel Lam’s ‘Unearthing the Heart, The Thousand Grottoes of Dunhuang’ creates a rare and meaningful dialogue between a defining masterpiece of the past and a bold new work that calls us toward compassion and humanity.”
After Lam’s commissioned work, the Feb. 7-8 concerts culminate with Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a work that revolutionized modern music with its driving rhythms, bold harmonies, and visceral energy. First heard in 1913, Stravinsky’s shocking score shattered expectations and changed music forever, the QCSO said. More than a century later, its raw energy and daring imagination remain unmistakable. QCSO’s performance promises an electrifying and unforgettable experience.
“Bringing new works to life is always exciting, and it is one of the most important things that we as an organization can do,” QCSO music director and conductor Mark Russell Smith said. “The premiere of Angel Lam’s ‘Unearthing the Heart: The Thousand Grottoes of Dunhuang’ is a perfect example of the kind of inspiration and connection that working with living composers can provide. I am thrilled that we will be joined by the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company — artists who were inspired by Angel Lam’s music and the amazing story of the Dunhuang grottoes. Vivid, colorful music combining with the grace and drama of Chinese dance will make for yet another unforgettable QCSO experience.”
“The QCSO strives to bring voices of remarkable depth and diversity to our community, and Angel Lam’s music embodies that aspiration perfectly,” Smith has said previously, when the QCSO was one of just three orchestras selected by the League of American Orchestras as a lead orchestra in the third Toulmin orchestra consortium to premiere a new work by Angel Lam, during the 2026-27 concert season. “Her ability to weave deeply personal stories with profound musicality creates a unique and transformative experience for audiences. We are thrilled to lead this consortium and to bring her extraordinary artistry to life on our stage.”
Harmonizing Western and Chinese music
Lam has a background in western classical and Chinese folk music, having learned to play the zheng and qin -- ancient Chinese zithers, as a child. Lam's work combines evocative, memorable melodies, an exploration of deeply felt human experiences, with her soul-searching sensitivity to spirituality.
She earned her doctorate from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, the Henry and Lucy Moses full scholarship Artist diploma from Yale University, and a bachelor’s degree from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.
Lam is one of America’s foremost female composers selected by the League of American Orchestras and the Toulmin Foundation. Upcoming, she will write three new commissioned works to be performed by nine professional North American orchestras. Most recently, she is also the recipient of Opera America’s Discovery Grant Award to develop her new musical-opera.
Previously, she was honored to receive three New York Carnegie Hall commissions before the age of 29, including a cello concerto dedicated to Yo-Yo Ma and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Spano. She also wrote a piece for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble’s worldwide tour, performing at prestigious venues like Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and the Royal Albert Hall in London. She is a composer-in-residence at Yale University Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in Connecticut, where she is commissioned to write a new work for superstar pipa virtuoso Wu Man and artistic director Melvin Chen at their festival opening concert.
Lam has curated, produced and composed a 2-hour concert program at Merkin Hall in New York titled “Hong Kong Journeys,” co-presented by the 25th anniversary of the city of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Economics and Trade Office of New York, with harmonica world champion Gordon Lee as guest artist.
Her works have been performed and recorded by many orchestras across the country, and in 70 cities worldwide by multiple touring ensembles, including Music at Copland House Ensemble (U.S. tour), Silk Road Ensemble (world-wide tour), Guitar Foundation of America (GFA International Concert Artists competition set repertoire, publication and worldwide recordings), Hub New Music Ensemble (U.S. tour and album release), Asia-America New Music Institute (Asia tour), Sulzbach-Rosenberg International Music Festival at the Konzertsaal des Rathauses, Bavaria, Germany, New Music for Strings Iceland Festival, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Radio Television Hong Kong (featured short film), Hong Kong Arts Festival, among others.
She was voted “Artist of the Month” by Musical America, “Yalie of the Week” by Yale University Yale Alumni Magazine, and a featured artist on Best Buy Inc.'s "Creative Minds" with the Minnesota Orchestra performing her orchestral work “In Search of Seasons,” conducted by Osmo Vanska.
Third new work in the QC
Lam was first heard in the Quad Cities in a chamber piece, in January 2024 performed at Davenport’s Figge Art Museum (part of the QCSO “Up Close” series), and then in her first commission for the full QCSO Masterworks program, originally announced in fall 2022.
The QC Symphony was then one of 30 orchestras nationwide part of the League of American Orchestras’ Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program.
The unprecedented national consortium ensures that new works by women composers, each commissioned by the League, will be infused in orchestra seasons to come, with multiple performances throughout the country, according to a QCSO release. Lam’s personal, emotional “Please let there be a paradise…,” written to honor her father (who passed away in January 2021), was given its premiere in 2024 in Kansas City, and later performed here by the QCSO in April 2025.
“They are very committed to performing and enthusiastic about new pieces, about finding new pieces and supporting new works,” Lam said in a Monday phone interview, Feb. 2, noting conductor Mark Russell Smith suggested incorporating dance into the new Dunhuang piece. “He was very excited. He has some ideas and he knew this choreographer personally and he's worked with her in Minneapolis. She's New York based and so we are able to work together in New York this past month, in the past few months as I'm working on this piece.”
The dance was inspired by the cave paintings, and the music was inspired by the dance, Lam said, noting she also was in the QC last fall to rehearse the work in progress with the QCSO.
“There are many colorful paintings painted from a thousand years ago. And the choreography is inspired by those paintings from that period on the Silk Road,” she said. “I need to see how she reinterprets those dance techniques live. So I need to go into her rehearsals and see her do it with her dancers. And that got me the inspiration to write the piece and the sound, the music. And I did a lot of research about the city, the city of Dunhuang. I had to do a lot of background research about imagining the desert and the oasis and how that will come alive in the orchestral piece.”
Lam has never been to the site in person, but noted the cave paintings “are very historic and very famous. It's a treasure trove of Buddhist documentation for a thousand years on the Silk Road,” she said. “There are 500 to 1,000 caves in Dunhuang that document Buddhism, their spirituality, stories and life.”
“I've heard of it since growing up. since I was little,” Lam said. She has been to the ancient capital there, Xi’an, which is close by.
Lam has written dance music before, including for a Peabody Dance Showcase in Baltimore in 2012, for their centennial celebration, as well as for the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts for their contemporary and Chinese dance department.
The choreographer for the new piece had listened to all of Lam’s music before they worked together, and “she already felt a familiarity and that is very close to her heart,” the composer said. “So we speak very fluently with each other about the movements and the emotions we want to pour into it, we want to express. So it was very easy to communicate with her because we kind of just knew each other on a heart level.”
There will be six dancers performing with the QCSO in the 34-minute piece, which will feature ribbons.
Focus on female composers
Lam said she’s grateful to get commissions designed to showcase female composers, who are rarely heard on classical music programs.
“It’s a great honor. I've worked with Atlanta Symphony and different symphonies long ago. So I think my past history with orchestras led me to be in that pool of applicants,” she said. “I've done major orchestras before. So I think that this is such a great honor that they remember me, after many years, they still remember me, and they picked me a second time for this bigger piece.”
Lam also said it’s awe-inspiring to be on the same program with the Stravinsky classic “The Rite of Spring” (originally written as a ballet, but not featuring dancers this time).
“It's a masterpiece. And I love Rite of Spring,” she said. “I love the sound world of the instrumentation that Stravinsky had, so I still kept some of the instrumentation, with some of the beautiful sounds.”
“It's like one of the scores I study for contemporary music, but joyously is from a different era, different time, different century,” Lam said. “So for my piece, it's gonna be a different approach to music. I'm not looking for a modernist approach. So that's the difference. I totally admire Stravinsky.”
Lam described her music as “very heart-driven, deeply felt, and I usually have a way to relate to humanity. I want it to touch people's lives and relate to our existence,” she said. “And especially looking at the Dunhuang paintings. It's about spiritual awakening and finding compassion.”
The costumes for the QCSO dance company were designed by the same designer for costumes at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Lam said. “The choreographer had a connection with him, so he designed all the clothes for us and flew them over here.”
The concerts will be Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026, at 7:30 at the Adler Theatre, 136 E. 3rd St., Davenport, and Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026, at 2 p.m. at Centennial Hall, 3703 7th Ave, Rock Island. For tickets and more information, click HERE. You can watch a recent conversation between Lam and the QCSO’s executive director, Brian Baxter, HERE.
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