The Twelve Chinese Zodiac Animals, Book 2: Preludes and Fugues

Book 2 of this series is a collection of twelve preludes and fugues that represent each of the Chinese Zodiac animals in their teenage years. The principle of creating this collection is to have the animals “grow up” in musical form so students can grow older with them. Thus, the materials of each animal from Book 1 are retained in Book 2 but rewritten in ways to reflect their musical growths and technical advancements. The choice of writing them as Preludes and Fugues serves two purposes:

1. They are forms that most students and pianists of an advanced level will be familiar with (through the works of Bach) and thus easier for them to embrace.
2. This allows me to express Chinese cultural themes within Western musical traditions to represent my bi-cultural identity in musical form while introducing students and pianists to Chinese culture.

In addition, this collection expands on the pianistic techniques I developed in Book 1, which were originally inspired by the performance practices of Chinese traditional instruments. Thus, one will hear many familiar sounds normally associated to various traditional instruments but presented in pianistic form (eg. pipa, ruan, guzheng, etc).
As mentioned, each movement represents musical caricatures of each animal in their teenage years:

1. Rascally Rat
2. The Mighty Ox
3. Dance of the Tigers
4. Jubilant Rabbit
5. Soaring Dragon
6. Spirited Snake
7. The Galloping Horse
8. Drowsy Lamb
9. Mimicking Manic Monkeys
10. Rollicking Rooster
11. The Sauntering Dog
12. Tranquil Pig

I would like to express my deepest thanks and gratitude to The University of Calgary’s Piano Department for their support and to the twelve student pianists I collaborated with on the creation of this collection: April Reyes, Ronan Paulhus, Ray Wang, Renee Pi, Kiwa Fukuchi, Christine (Yunseo) Sul, Jerry Liao, Anika Acasio, Amanda Caceres, Dakota Perez, Jarome Harlea, and Agata Skulimowska. I also thank Dr. Jani Parsons and Lana Henchell for mentoring these twelve students on this project, and to my publisher Promethean Editions Ltd for their support. Finally, I must thank pianist Tony Yike Yang for collaborating with me on this album and for his brilliant interpretations of my music.

Image credit: “Horse” by Lilith Ohan

TO ORDER PRINT COPIES:
North America:
Volume 1: https://www.presser.com/pe216-the-twelve-chinese-zodiac-animals-2c-book-2.html
Volume 2: [link coming soon]
International:
Volume 1: https://store.prometheaneditions.com/products/the-twelve-chinese-zodiac-animals-book-2-vol-1
Volume 2: [link coming soon]

TO ORDER DIGITAL DOWNLOADS:
Volume 1 (mvts 1-6):

0,The Twelve Chinese Zodiac Animals, Book 2: Preludes and Fugues, Volume 1

Volume 2 (mvts 7-12):
0,The Twelve Chinese Zodiac Animals, Book 2: Preludes and Fugues, Volume 2