Duration: 7 minutes
   Written for: PRISM Saxophone Quartet & Music From China
      Performances:                        
                                                     PRISM + MUSIC FROM CHINA                    
           February 27, 2009  8:00pm      Settlement Music School (416 Queen Street, Philadelphia, PA)-- World Premiere
           February 28, 2009  8:00pm      Merkin Concert Hall (129 West 67th Street, New York, NY)
                 March 1, 2009                          Freer Museum (Washinton DC)
                 

        Program note:   

Chinatown (2008) is written for PRISM Saxophone Quartet and Music From China.  The inspiration comes from my many visits to Chinatowns in the United States.  The first movement, Strangers, describes a westerner walking into a Chinatown and finding himself lost, surrounded by all kinds of signs and sounds in foreign languages.  Footprints, a nostalgic movement, is a portrait of an old Chinese woman, who has been living within these blocks for a half century.  Sitting at sunset, she remembers how she has survived these years in the States.  Festival is a celebration of the encounter of different cultures, where the motifs in the previous movements combine.