Four Seasons - Yunfei Li

Описание: 🎶 Description:
This recording is part of my doctoral project, featuring four settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, composed by Yunfei Li. Created through close collaboration between composer and performers, these songs explore the quiet intensity of Dickinson’s poetry and the subtle relationship between text and sound.

Rather than approaching the poems as isolated pieces, this project grew through a long process of listening, revising, and performing. Each song reflects a shared effort to balance musical expression with textual clarity, allowing meaning to unfold naturally through voice and piano.

✍️ Composer’s Note:
Four Seasons is a song cycle inspired by four poems by Emily Dickinson. Each song represents a season of the year and shows how nature and human emotions change together.

In Spring is the Period, the music feels lively and bright, showing the new life and energy of spring. Summer – We all have seen has a warm and full sound, like sunlight and quiet summer days. The morns are meeker than they were captures the soft and reflective feeling of autumn, with a gentle and thoughtful tone.

The final song, Snow Flakes, moves with a cold and restless energy. Using the whole tone scale, the music creates a sense of floating snow and icy wind — bright, shivering, and alive. Instead of calm stillness, winter here feels full of motion and sharp beauty.

This piece connects Dickinson’s vivid poetry with nature’s changing moods, showing how each season brings its own color, sound, and emotion.

— Yunfei Li, 2025

🎤 Performer’s Note
Living with these songs over an extended period allowed me to return to Dickinson’s poetry again and again, each time discovering something new.
This project became more than a performance—it was a journey shaped by collaboration, patience, and deep listening.

🎼 Credits:
Composer: Yunfei Li
Poet: Emily Dickinson
Mezzo soprano: Ying Jin
Piano: Jamin Kim
Recording: NV Factory; Oct 9, 2025

Thank you for listening.