Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Portland Ballet is Portland’s professional ballet company and has shared the Merrill stage with PSO for multiple performances. It is flutist Mimi Stillman’s first appearance with the orchestra, and the first time the PSO has played music by Chinese American composer Zhou Tian.

Ballet itself has roots that go back to Renaissance Italy and France. It was particularly identified with French royalty before the Revolution, becoming popular with the growing wealthy middle-class thereafter. As it separated from a subservient role within opera, ballet found its ability to tell stories through dance. That ability helped it to spread throughout Europe, particularly Russia, and eventually to the Americas. The Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev suites heard on this program, from the Russian Romantic and Soviet ballet traditions, stand among their composers’ most expressive music in any genre.

Composer Zhou Tian was born into a musical family in 1981 in Hangzhou, China. He moved to the US when he was 19, eventually attending the Curtis Institute, the Juilliard School, and the University of Southern California. His teachers included Jennifer Higdon, Christopher Rouse, and Stephen Hartke. Zhou is currently professor of composition at Michigan State University.

His flute concerto was co-commissioned for tonight’s soloist by seven US orchestras, which are listed in the accompanying program note. Flutist Mimi Stillman had known Zhou’s music since 2010 and commissioned a previous work from the composer. For this concerto, the two collaborated extensively, a process that resulted in a work uniquely suited to Stillman’s abilities. Zhou’s fluent musical language encompasses references to Baroque music, the American composers Walter Piston and Samuel Barber, and French music of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The collaboration of soloist and composer places this work in a long tradition that dates back hundreds of years and has produced many of the great concertos still heard in concert halls.

– Martin Webster