Music Composition | Bree Zhang

Compositions by Bree Zhang

Guzheng Solo Compositions

Returning Home

This piece is dedicated to my grandmother, who travelled to America to help raise me when I was a child. She instilled in me values of gratitude, patience, resilience, and the art of listening. However, as the years went by, my grandmother had to return to China due to her declining health, and she never came back to America again. I missed her very much, wishing I could see her again. 7 years later, I was given the perfect chance: I found out I was returning to China for a guzheng competition and that I would be able to reunite with my grandmother before the competition. I was so elated and excited that I decided to write a song dedicated to my grandmother called “Returning Home.” The first section of my song (0:00 to 2:39) symbolizes my longing for my grandma. The allegro portion (2:39-4:00), which features my technical skills, symbolizes my excitement and anticipation of meeting her after so many years of separation.

I also paired artwork with this piece. The first three works in this sequence show key points of my relationship with her. The last work features my happy reunion with her. That day, I was able to perform the song for her in person, and the smile on her face was another moment that I wanted to capture in memory forever.

Metamorphosis

Just as a caterpillar transforms to a butterfly, this piece describes my metamorphosis into a determined young woman. Reflecting back on myself in high school, I used to have confidence issues and always felt like a secondary character. However, music, art, story-writing, and my interactions with my culture helped to provide stepping stones which I slowly climbed until I gathered enough “nutrients'' to crystallize and form a cocoon of confidence.

Growing Up

This song addresses the joy, sadness, and beauty of growing up. It begins with a main melody filled with fun and playfulness, representing the innocence and unreserved happiness of our childhood. The melody grow faster and faster, but then it shatters. Moving forward, the song takes a deeper tune, one that may be filled with shades of guilt, heartbreak, anxiety, fear but it symbolizes advancing forward, step-by-step. grow, finding strength in our weaknesses and fears, learning how to live with our own inner demons. Eventually the song returns to the original tune, but a little more mature now, representing how we may look back to our old childhood memories with a reminiscing and appreciate our childhood.

Guzheng with Vocals Compositions

Guzheng with Vocals

Daydreams

One of my first pieces I composed which involved guzheng and vocals.

To the girl in this song (Me Of the Past), she would’ve never imagined herself living the life featured at the end of this song (artwork which I paint in saturated beautiful colors), so it’s just yet another “daydream,” a beautiful lie she repeats to herself in hopes of seeing change.

But someday, it will come true, someday :)

Orchestral Compositions

A Mother's Love

This music composition and series of 12 art pieces (titled “A Mother’s Love”) is a tribute to my mother and all the other beautiful mothers in this world who have given us irreplaceable support, wisdom, care, and love since the day we were born, from changing our diapers, to teaching us how to walk, to comforting us when we are sad, to cheering on our successes, to supporting us even when we leave home to explore the world. No matter how old I become, I will always keep my mother in my heart and remember all the sacrifices and hardships she endured to provide me opportunities to grow, learn, and love. I love you 妈妈.

Dancing in Snowflakes

“Dancing in Snowflakes” is written for my chinese orchestra, Music From China Youth Orchestra. It describes the care, grace, and empathy we must have to interact with snow without breaking its purity—whether we are in elation and power or in stillness and quietude. Although the song does have western elements, it takes on a predominantly ethnic theme from the pentatonic scale. Furthermore, it features several individual solos, from Hulusi to Erhu to Liuqin to Guzheng, and these instruments build on each other in layers and layers, accumulating in volume and power just as snowflakes quietly and seamlessly decorate a landscape in their beautiful coldness. A main melody is integrated 5 times throughout the song, but it is rendered differently each time, sometimes appearing as a solo, other times being played by the whole entire orchestra. Regardless, the last melody (m. 60) is played by all the instruments that complement and support each other as one unit—just as snow sticks together and embraces the world in a single color of white.

Dancing in Snowflakes - Bree Zhang

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A Journey in Retrospect

“A Journey in Retrospect” was my first attempt at composition. I wrote it December 2016 for my orchestra (Music From China Youth Orchestra), and it was performed on June 3rd, 2017 at Drew University. Mixing elements of western and traditional pentatonic music, this song reflects the journey of a person’s life—and my own journey through composing.

It begins with a prelude that introduces the central motif to set the mood and pace of the song, in the same manner an author would preface his story with some background. The prelude is followed by a jumpy innocent melody first played by plucked instruments—representing our shaky little steps at the beginning of a journey (m. 9). The melody is then repeated more richly and melodically by string instruments—representing out gradual maturation and development in our journeys (m. 17). Eventually, the song changes into a more powerful theme (m. 33) that is characterized by strength and willpower in the face of trial and tribulations- the melody builds in momentum until it reaches a climatic direct modulation key change (m. 44). Following the key change is a rich intersection of three different melody lines, and the song slowly falls in power until it repeats the prelude (m. 53), returning full circle, but this time, the prelude sounds different: it is deeper, more experienced, more reflective tone- just as we when we look back at the end of our journeys.

A Journey in Retrospect - Bree Zhang