On March 28, 2012, the Ecstatic Music Festival offered an eclectic intersection of East and West. The program featured two ensembles, Music from Copland House and Music from China, performing four world premieres that mixed Chinese and Western styles and instrumentation.
The evening opened with Four Movements for Piano Trio by Chinese composer Bright Sheng, before moving to four world premieres that took notably different approaches to their incorporation of Chinese instruments and musical vernacular.
Contradicting Unison, by Gaybird Leung (a.k.a. Leung Kei-Chuek) incorporated video and live electronics over an ensemble of clarinet, cello, erhu and zheng. Derek Bermel's Dragon Blue brought together elements of blues, bluegrass and traditional Chinese music.
Du Yun's The Hidden Face, which opened the evening's second set, employed extended techniques on both Eastern and Western instruments, making for a sound often teetering on the brink of chaos. The performance closed with The Third Pixel, by Samson Young, a three-part composition for clarinet, violin, cello, pipa, video and electronics.