Chorus Divertimento: The Drowning SunsetOct.15th,2016  Duanjun Theater, STA

The Drowning Sunset
—— a suite for the chamber choir


  Gustation, merging unobtrusively in the warm whisper of an idle breeze, twinkling around the fresh ornament of the sparkling cherry, and lingering on the orbicular rest of the day lily, serves as a memory of this world in our daily life. Sequenced chronically by the taste of saltiness, sweetness, sourness and bitterness. The Drowning Sunset tells a story of nostalgia and remembrance. Moreover, this is just as what Ze’ Ya is featured of; different chapters are sequenced by elements in the 24 solar terms, forming a subtle, poetic redolence.
 
  The Drowning Sunset is composed of four chapters, and each chapter consists of two pieces. They are The Sail (Saltiness), The Garlanded Coast (Sweetness), Flying Whales in the Clouds (Sourness) and The Rain at Night (Bitterness).
 


  The suite tells a utopian fantasy in the first person narrative, which is composed of four chapters, corresponding to four different emotions and tastes.
 
  It begins when our leading character is in his childhood, taken by his parents to an uninhabited island with their puppy, and then starts a new life there. (Chapter 1) With the surrounds of natural landscapes and wildlife on the island, he grows up, full of curiosity and confusion about the outside world. (Chapter 2) As time goes by, his family are all dead, leaving him alone, looking forward to the second coming of the good old days. “When there should emerge the sunset from all sides on the island, all of us would be back.” Said his parents. (Chapter 3) And then there comes to the end, the lonely aged man lies in the twilight light, simple and unaffected. Where did he go? Where should the sunset glow? In every drip of rain and breeze of wind, from all sides we know. (Chapter 4)
 
  Composer: JIN CHENGZHI
  Performer:RAINBOW CHAMBER SINGERS