Reviews (orchestral version):

“It made for one of the most creative – and most enjoyable – concerts heard at Music Hall this season. Zhou’s [Trace], a CSO commission, opened the concert on a lush, neo-impressionistic note. The work recalls a vanished China, one replaced by industrialization. Concertmaster Timothy Lees was the soloist, giving the work its heart in two aria-like episodes…A playful, folk-like tune inserted toward the end sealed it with nostalgia. Zhou, 30, was present to receive the crowd’s warm applause.”
—The Cincinnati Enquirer

“The night’s opener was more absorbing and substantial than any overture you could name. ‘Trace,’ by MSU faculty composer Zhou Tian, was a dense, multilayered tapestry of memories and images meant to evoke ancient places and ways of life bulldozed under China’s relentless industrialization…A kaleidoscopic series of carnival outbursts and dance patterns suggested a limitless mosaic of life. The orchestra negotiated a complicated series of twists, turns and shifts in mood with a quiet grace that gave Zhou’s vibrant style an amber glow. Fleeting episodes featured an intricate battery of percussion and a butterfly cloud of woodwinds that flickered distinctly and memorably, despite the bigger forces surging around them.”
—Lansing CityPulse