Ephemeral Bloom (2021)
​for Symphony Orchestra--Seattle Festival Orchestra

I wrote Ephemeral Bloom thinking about a poem by the Chinese poet in the Tang Dynasty, Wang Wei, called <Xin Yi Wu> (The Magnolia Dale).

In the poem, Wang Wei captured a fleeting moment in the life and death of magnolia flowers. In just one night, the buds awake with the arrival of the spring breeze, and after a gentle

drizzle, they vanish without a trace. I am deeply touched by the beauty of evanescence and the subtle melancholy it evokes. We all think life is an inexhaustible well, yet everything happens only a certain number of times, within a certain span of time.

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I composed this work imagining myself as a painter of Chinese Shan Shui. The wide intervals in the lower register represent ridges and mountains. As for buds and petals, which are the short phrases, trills, and sound of breaths in the woodwinds.