Let Fly (2013)

First Performance
October 4 2013
Gil Shaham, violin
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
Detroit, MI

Composer Note
Borrowed from a folk song genre in southeast China (‘flying song’), the title of the work came from two inspirations. First, it is the aural image of the violin melody just flying off in the air, an everlasting sensation when I first saw Gil Shaham perform at a concert.

The second inspiration of the title came from my daughter Fayfay (homonym for ‘to fly’ in Chinese). I wrote a child rhyme named after her when she was born on November 15th, 2010. And the theme of the song appears a few times in the composition.

The work is simply structured: three movements in one, with a cadenza between the second and third movement. The soloist is encouraged to write his or her own cadenza, of no more than 1-2 minutes, ideally based on the materials which have appeared up to this point of the concerto.

— Bright Sheng