mezzo soprano

Lingling H. Peng 何玲玲

As a prolific and internationally renowned composer and professor, Dr. Pei Lu?s music has been performed throughout Europe, Asia and Africa, such as France, Belgium, Canada, The Netherlands, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Britain, South Africa, Italy, Mainland China, as well as the U. S.  His compositions also appeared in the Fullerton Hall of the Art Institute of Chicago, Merkin Concert Hall of New York City, Green Lake Music Festival of Wisconsin, Minnesota Symphony Hall, Chicago Orchestral Center, Chicago Grant Park Music Festival at Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, as well as in Taiwan National Music Hall. During the period of June 26 to July 7, 2002, one of his commissioned pieces, Ballad Variation No.1, was performed in Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project concert series in Washington D.C. at the 36th Annual Smithsonsian Folklife Festival.

Dr. Lu?s teaching career started from Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1987. After earning his doctoral degree from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor in 2002, he also taught at the University of Louisville and Nanking Normal University. He was granted the Honorable Professorship by the Guangxi Institute of Fine Arts. He is a full professor at Shanghai Conservatory of Music, China and has been teaching there since 2006.

Program Notes of Mountain Dreams

Lu Pei 

In my hometown Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in Southwest China lived as many as thirteen ethnic minority groups.  People from those groups are famous for their talents and love of singing and dancing - they celebrate as well as mourn with songs and dances; they propose and wed with songs and dances; they work and compete with songs and dances. Singing and dancing are as common and important to these folks in expressing themselves as language is to others. This is why Guangxi is also known as ?the Land of Songs and Dances? in China.

                My love for my hometown did not ebb away after I left home in pursuit of my dreams in music. No matter where I went, the sounds of the music and the images of the dancers of Guangxi had been following me, awake or asleep ? I would see trees outside of my window dancing like a beautiful girl of the Miao nationality; I would hear the wind carrying the songs of a handsome lad of the Yao or Dong nationalities; I dreamed to dance with people of Zhuang or Molao nationalities. Guangxi had been so relentlessly hunting me and I was so helpless in dodging the hunt until Ms. Lingling, a wonderful mezzo-soprano, asked me to compose a piece for her.

                Thus was the piece called Mountain Dream. On the day the piece was finished, I dreamed again: I was standing in the mountain, looking around: It was dark. There was nothing except for the shadows of the trees and the skylines of the mountains. Stars were twinkling in the dark-blue sky. Suddenly, I heard the music drifting to me from afar. It was so familiar that I could sing with it. The sky suddenly became bright and I felt that I was like Alice in the Wonderland, surrounded by beautiful fairies?I thought I had long passed the age to dream like this, but the dream continued?I was dancing with the fairies, donning traditional dresses of Yao, Miao, Dong and Zhuang?I slept peacefully that night.