Poetic spirit

The repertoire will include Return, featuring three singers from the Dong ethnic group, as well as Mountains and Seas and Fantasy of the Journey.

The five works to be performed, Shi says, were composed after she started teaching at the Central Conservatory of Music in 2009, where she is now an associate professor and graduate student supervisor of the composition department.

Shi, who was born in Shenyang in Northeast China's Liaoning province, was introduced to music by her father, a tenor.

She grew up being surrounded by music thanks to her father, an avid music fan who enjoys classical music and Peking Opera.

Shi started playing piano at the age of 6, and later obtained a bachelor's degree in composition from the Central Conservatory of Music.

For the composer, composition is an abstract, emotional and personal process.

In 1997, she composed a piece, titled Sheng Sheng Man, for piano and soprano, which was based on a work by the female Song Dynasty (960-1279) poet, Li Qingzhao of the same title.

"I composed the piece when I read the poem and was touched by the lines which portray the sorrow and loneliness of the poet's late years," says Shi.

The poem reminded Shi of her grandmother, with whom she grew up, who died of cancer at the age of 67. Shi's grandmother, the composer says, was "a strong and independent" woman, who raised her two sons alone after her divorce.

"I remember visiting my grandmother on one occasion and seeing her sitting alone in the sunset. Her shadow on the wall was so beautiful, I will never forget it," Shi says.

"When I composed Sheng Sheng Man, I portrayed that scene with my music."

Shi, who spent six years further pursuing her studies in Canada, received her master's degree from the University of Victoria in 2005 and gained a doctorate from the University of Toronto in 2009.

Then, after winning the Young Composers Project in the China National Arts Fund competition in 2015, she went on to become a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York until February 2017.

The composer says she has spent a long time thinking about the connection between composing and her Chinese roots.

"I was inspired a lot by traditional Chinese poetry and folk stories. And while I was studying in Canada, I was open and interested in fusing the aesthetics of Chinese music, literature and art with the compositional techniques of Western music," says Shi.

One of her works, Distance, which was scored for a mixed ensemble of traditional Chinese and Western instruments, and premiered in Toronto in 2013, will also be part of the concert on March 23.

Describing it, Shi says, "Distance does not only mean time and space, but also signifies the ability to reconsider and rediscover the roots of language and culture".

Speaking about Shi's works, Lawrence Cherney, artistic director of the Toronto music presenter, Soundstreams, says, "Shi Fuhong bridges the gap between the East and the West.

"She can speak in two different languages at the same time using contemporary vocabularies."