While I was working in China, my longtime friend and favorite violinist Ally Jenkins happened to also be coming through. So there we were in Changzhou on a Tuesday, drinking some very suspect rice liquor and dealing with the madness of a foreign country when word came in from on high that her quartet needed to find an arrangement of the Chinese traditional song “Mo Li Hua” for a second encore. And that it needed to be ready in less than a week.
That Friday afternoon, I sent them a new setting of the classic Chinese melody. Inspired by the journeys of the thousands of Chinese men who built the railroad and settled in the American West, it sees the traditional melody gradually transform to become more and more rhythmic and Western, until the next thing you know it’s a fiddle solo and I’m plagiarizing Aaron Copland. Did I say plagiarizing? I meant, uh…homage. It’s an homage.
Anyway: Here it is!