The Book of Mountains & Seas

Composer Huang Ruo has been lauded by The New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls “Dimensionalism.”

Huang Ruo’s diverse compositional works span from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, architectural installation, multimedia, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film.  His music has been premiered and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Royal Danish Opera, Asko/Schoenberg, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, and conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Marin Alsop, Andrew Davis, Michael Tilson Thomas, and James Conlon.

His opera An American Soldier (with libretto by David Henry Hwang) has recently received its world premiere at Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2018, and was named one of the best classical music events in 2018 by The New York Times.  His installation opera Paradise Interrupted was premiered at the Spoleto Festival USA in 2015 and was performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2016, with future touring planning for Europe and Asia.  Another opera, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, premiered at the Santa Fe Opera in 2014.  His recent new opera M. Butterfly (with libretto by David Henry Hwang) received its world premiere with the Santa Fe Opera in 2022.  His other upcoming new operas will be premiered and presented by the Seattle Opera, BAM's Next Wave Festival, Prototype Festival, Singapore International Festival of Arts, and the Hong Kong New Vision Festival, etc.

He served as the first composer-in-residence for Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and was the visiting composer for the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in Brazil. 

Huang Ruo was born in Hainan Island, China in 1976, the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended. His father, who is also a composer, began teaching him composition and piano when he was six years old. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, when China was opening its gate to the Western world, he received both traditional and Western education at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. As a result of the dramatic cultural and economic changes in China following the Cultural Revolution, his education expanded from Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutoslawski, to include the Beatles, rock and roll, heavy metal, and jazz. Huang Ruo was able to absorb all of these newly allowed Western influences equally.

After winning the Henry Mancini Award at the 1995 International Film and Music Festival in Switzerland, he moved to the United States to further his education. He earned a bachelor of music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and master of music and doctor of musical arts degrees in composition from the Juilliard School. 

Huang Ruo is a composition faculty at the Mannes School of Music in New York, and is the artistic director and conductor of Ensemble FIRE. He was selected as a Young Leader Fellow by the National Committee on United States–China Relations in 2006.

Huang Ruo’s music is published by Ricordi. For more information about the composer and his music, please visit HuangRuo.com.

Photo: Wenjun Miakoda Liang

Basil Twist is a third-generation puppeteer. He is the sole American to graduate from the École Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mezieres, France. Basil’s showmanship was spotlighted in New York by the Jim Henson International Festival of Puppetry with his award winning The Araneidae Show. This recognition coupled with the ground-breaking and multiple award-winning Symphonie Fantastique, Twist was revealed as a singular artist of unlimited imagination.

Highlights of subsequent work have included Petrushka (commissioned by Lincoln Center) and Dogugaeshi (The Japan Society), Behind the Lid (Silver Whale Gallery) with the late Lee Nagrin and Arias with a Twist, co-created with nightlife icon Joey Arias. Symphonie and these productions have now toured throughout the world. In 2012 a cohort of Washington D.C. presenters hosted a retrospective of his work, featuring four productions and an exhibition. His site-specific commission Seafoam Sleepwalk for the WOW Festival at the La Jolla Playhouse was a festival favorite. Rite of Spring was commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts & made its world premiere at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2013, appearing also at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival. Sisters Follies was created for Abrons Arts Center’s 100th Anniversary in 2015

Deeply musical in nature, Mr. Twist thrives in the world of opera. He just created a new Titon et l’Aurore with Les Arts Florissants at the Opera-Comique in Paris. He recently collaborated with Phelim McDermott on Aida at English National Opera, Geneva Opera House and Houston Grand Opera, and with Dick Bird on Otello at the Vienna State Opera. A new production of Ottorini Respighi’s La Bella Dormente Nel Bosco (Sleeping Beauty) was created with the Gotham Chamber Opera for Lincoln Center Festival and Spoleto USA Festivals, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel for Houston Grand Opera, Atlanta Opera and Detroit Opera. De Falla’s Master Peter's Puppet Show was commissioned by Eos Orchestra and performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Broadway credits include puppetry design for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Oh, Hello!, The Addams Family and puppetry direction for the beloved Pee-Wee Herman Show.

His work has received an Obie, Drama Desk Awards, UNIMA Awards, Bessie Awards, a New York Innovative Theatre Award, and a Henry Hewes Award. He has been honored with a MacArthur, the “Rome Prize” from the American Academy in Rome, a Guggenheim Fellowship, USA Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and his productions have received numerous grants from the Jim Henson Foundation.

Twist guides the internationally recognized Dream Music Puppetry Program at HERE in New York City.

Learn more at BasilTwist.com.

Ayumu “Poe” Saegusa began his career as a professional lighting designer in 2000 in Tokyo. He worked as a freelance designer also worked as an apprentice under master lighting designer Shin Inokuchi for two years.

He moved to New York City in 2005. After an internship at HERE Arts Center in Soho, he became resident lighting designer there. He served as lighting designer for Culture Mart (an annual festival of HERE’s resident artists) from 2006-2019, and designed lighting for 20 full productions (including Looking At You by Kristin Martin and The Black History Museum by Zoey Martinson) and countless works in progress and showcases there.

He has worked as a freelance lighting designer for the New York International Fringe Festival, Lincoln Center and international tours. His credits include Kameron Steel's Skriker (Williams College), Basil Twist's Rite of Spring (White Light Festival at Lincoln Center) and the Philharmonia Orchestra of New York's 2016-18 seasons at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater.

He also works as a production coordinator for clients including the Tokyo Metropolitan Theater Japan Society, NHK (Japan Broad Cast corporation), FCI, Shochiku and Katsura Sunshine, among others.

Ars Nova Copenhagen is a 12-piece vocal ensemble founded in 1979, widely recognized as one of the world's finest of its kind. The ensemble's chief conductor and artistic director since 2003 is the acclaimed British conductor Paul Hillier.

The ensemble specializes in the interpretation of the polyphonic choral music of the renaissance and new vocal music. Ars Nova also builds collaborations with creative artists in different fields such as drama, film and ballet, as well as cultivating new modes of concert performance and innovative repertoire. The group's performances are marked with precision and nerve and with a sound that attracts attention worldwide.

With an annual concert season in Copenhagen and Aarhus, numerous concerts in the rest of Denmark and recurring tours worldwide, the group is now more in demand than ever. In recent years, the group has visited Great Britain, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Italy and China. After a premiere in November at the black box Takkelloftet theater at the Copenhagen Opera House, the ensemble will tour the U.S. with Book of Mountains & Seas with music by Huang Ruo and staging by the acclaimed puppet maker Basil Twist.

Ars Nova has recorded a large number of CDs, winning numerous awards, including a Grammy for the little match girl passion with music by David Lang (Harmonia Mundi). In 2020, an album entitled “… and …” (Naxos) with music by Arvo Pärt, Julia Wolfe, Caroline Shaw and a number of Italian medieval songs was released. BBC Music Magazine wrote: "This recording offers spiritual revelation and sonic pleasure from start to finish" and in Chorzeit, "The longing for divine purity, clarity and steadfastness that one can directly experience here is timeless.

Ars Nova is part of Tenso, the European network for professional chamber choirs.

Learn more at ArsNova.dk.

She is an opera and theater producer, singer, and voice teacher with bachelor and master of music degrees and a master of fine arts in theater management/producing from the Yale School of Drama, as well as many years of experience in the development of new opera and theater works. She first cultivated her extensive experience in arts administration at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute where she served as administrative director for four years. Beth served a founding tenure as the Producer for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre from 2009-2011, as well as Producer for New York City Opera’s VOX: Contemporary American Opera Lab from 2010-2011.

Beth Morrison Projects is the realization of Beth‘s vision, which stems from a deep commitment to nurturing composers and other artists and fostering the development of new opera and other new music-theater works. Established in 2006, Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) identifies and supports the work of emerging and established living composers and their multi-media collaborators through the commission, development, production and touring of their works, which take the form of contemporary music-theater, opera-theater, and multi-media concert works. BMP has established itself as a composers’ producer and The New York Times said, “The production of new [opera] works in the city still falls mostly to the tireless Beth Morrison and her Beth Morrison Projects…”

Learn more at BethMorrisonProjects.org.